


It Boy

by FKAHerSweetness



Category: Hannibal (TV), Jagten | The Hunt (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Sex, Coquettish Will, Crossdressing, Cyber stalking, Daddy Kink, Dour Lucas, Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, Harassment, Haughty Will, Incest, Kink Exploration, Light Xenophobia, M/M, Masturbation, Mildly Dubious Consent, Millennial Will, Misogyny, Molestation, No Serial Killing, Pedophilia, Prostitution, Stalking, inner turmoil, light Violence, multi-chaptered
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-11 06:06:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 17
Words: 60,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7032298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FKAHerSweetness/pseuds/FKAHerSweetness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>5/5 stars                                                                                                                                                </p><p>So happy with my experience with DS tonight!! The ordering system was intuitive & quick. Artisyn was super easy to talk to, understood what I wanted and answered any questions I had before, during & after. I looked at the reviews before ordering - another perk here that I love. You don't see many agencies these days willing to be so honest! Will definitely be a return customer. Thank you, Artisyn, you rock!! - K</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Deep Sugar

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, right. You're here for the thing, right? Yeah, okay. I got you, I got you. Hmm. Once upon a... right now. In a place... nearby. There was a...

The wording was strange, but Lucas thought he knew what it meant. In the moment, he was all trembling fingertips, sweat on his brow. He licked his lips, scrolled, tapped against the screen of his new phone. He has yet to fully acclimate.

 

_Thank you for ordering: Wondermint!_

_Your purchase will arrive shortly._

           

            It said there was a thirty minute wait-time, and for the first ten minutes he lay in bed, wide-and-red-eyed at the ceiling through his glasses. The covers, soaked in his own worn scent, ruffled around him. The floor lamp in the corner illuminating the shabby one-room apartment in yellow. Carpet peppered with crumbs and clothes. There was some urge in him to clean that he refuted. Clenched his fists and resisted, but only for another five minutes. In the last fifteen, he struggled from the bed on unsure footing from the two beers in the earlier evening. Nearly tripped on the smooth case of his phone which launched him into stuffing his button-up work shirts and slacks into the hamper in the one closet. Lightly smoothed over the bedcovers. There was a hint of something – a putrid undercurrent which Lucas could only finally attribute to the overflowing trashcan sitting in the small kitchenette, leaking onto the linoleum. The clock on the wall said it was 8:58 PM; too late to do anything about it. Still, Lucas stood staring at the time, at the trash, and he turns and stares at the door upon which someone has just knocked. Three light taps.

            Lucas rubs the palm of one sweaty hand against his pant leg. The last six months, each of them, feel like birds lighting on his shoulders. Just the barest presence physically. Just the flap of a wing, the turn of a head. Beady eyes blinking. Lucas goes to open the door.

            "Hey there." A man stands in the dimly lit hall, obscuring the view of 3F's blue door across the way. He is all Lucas can see: wide green eyes beneath a copse of dark curls. Pale face freshly shaven, and Lucas believes him to be an adult, but his age is ghostlike and uncertain. He could be twenty-five, he could be twenty. He strolls in past Lucas as if Lucas is merely a doorman, into the tiny prison of the apartment.

            "I," Lucas says.

            "Am I late?" He pulls a cell phone out of a leather satchel slung over one shoulder, tight against the dark fabric of his button-up. His face brightens and his fingers fly over the screen. "Shit, oh man, just made it. Traffic was terrible though, so you can't judge me too much, can you?" He drops the phone back in, looks up at Lucas who has let the door close behind him. He holds out a thin-fingered hand. "Wondermint. Lovely place you've got here."

            Lucas, despite himself, looks around to see if it has transformed into a lovely place.

            Wondermint smiles, giggles. "Shy? Okay. Shy is good."

            Lucas needs to say something. He has to say something. But then the young man is twirling on a heel, back for the bed which has been haphazardly made. He sits on the corner closest to Lucas, one leg bouncing crossed over the other. He drops the satchel to the beige carpet. Watches Lucas as if he's waiting for something.

            "You might wanna hurry it up," he says, one dark eyebrow raised. "You only ordered an hour."

            "I," Lucas says again. Then clears his throat. "I should not have."

            "Oh yeah? You should have ordered more time, you mean?" His gaze travels the length of Lucas. "Or less?"

            "The– the format," Lucas says. English, of late a companion, is fickle and escapes him when he is worried. "The website. I have not understood well. When I–"

            "The categories?"

            "Yes."

            Wondermint looks to consider this. That leg ever bouncing. He leans back on his hands, into the soft blankets. " _So_ ," he drawls. "Let me guess, you wanted a woman instead?"

            Lucas stands very still. He shakes his head. He says, "Forgive me. I was new to the terms." He closes his eyes tightly and realizes this has been a terrible idea. He feels those infinitesimal weights on his shoulders again, jostling each other, and he opens his eyes. "Of course, the mistake is mine. There is no refund needed–"

            The young man snorts. "Of course there won't be a refund! You'll see. It's not that big a deal. It happens more often than you think. Half of Boston is illiterate, it looks like." He grins now, toothy and expectant. "Doesn't matter."

            "This has happened to you before?" Lucas asks.

            "Sure it has. But no one's ever been unsatisfied," he says, rising from the bed in one fluid motion. He is on his feet, his black Converses. He crosses the small space between them like an apparition and stands inches apart from Lucas. Places the palms of his hands flatly against Lucas' broad chest. The heat of his body seeping through the cotton shirt. The young man rises on his toes and places his mouth to Lucas' in a quick and practiced form, and Lucas bears it silently, with open eyes. The young man's mouth moves rhythmically and with warm instance, but Lucas is stone-like in the face of it. Finally, Wondermint pulls back with a wholly perturbed expression.

            "This'd work better if you gave me some allowance," he says.

            Lucas says, "I've made a mistake."

            "Yeah, yeah. Listen–"

            "Please." He moves away, three full strides back for the door. Takes the doorknob in hand and opens it to the desolate hall. "Please leave."

            The look of annoyance shifts into disbelief. "What? It's been like five minutes, I can't just _go_."

            "I insist."

            He swallows. Takes in a deep breath and clasps his hands behind his back, moving smoothly one step forward. "Listen," he says, all smiles now, "you don't have to be embarrassed. I'm highly rated. I'll take care of you."

            "Good evening," Lucas says, standing aside.

            Wondermint squints, as if he is trying to see through Lucas, or perhaps intimidate him. The apartment is suddenly overly stuffy, even as the air conditioner whirs, kicks on, and the one window at the back of the room flutters its curtains under the breeze. Lucas holds himself like a monolith and refuses to meet the young man's fervent green eyes. After a moment, when Lucas thinks he will quietly go, he lets out some girlish shriek and bends quickly to snatch his bag from the floor.

            "Fine! You fucking jerk, your apartment smells like shit and it's the most depressing thing I've ever seen!" He stomps from the middle of the room, past Lucas, to the threshold. One dark curl hangs in his eye and he brushes it quickly away, fingernails raking over a pale scalp. "I don't know what the fuck your problem is but it's no wonder you're ordering whores on a Monday night!" He stomps out into the hallway, flashing an ired expression over his shoulder. "I hope your dick falls off!"

            And he leaves. Lucas leans slightly out of the doorway to watch the young man's fading form down the corridor. The blinking lights illumine and shadow him in turns. At the end of the hall he hits the stairwell and descends. Lucas shuts the door lightly. And when he is alone again, he is alone, again.

 

*

 

The body of Lucas' new phone is sleek and light. Too light, he thinks sometimes. He can forget he has it in his hand even. It's been dropped three times in the short stint he's had it in his possession – two weeks. He has been quite amazed by it, the things it brings him, the things he can do with it. At first he was uncertain. He'd had an old flip phone for ages, which did little more than inform him of the time and receive calls and minimal texts that he never responded to. He hadn't ever thought to get a new one. Kirsten used to berate him for his passive life in the Stone Age. The phone came in a small brown box from Kirsten's new address somewhere in Denmark, though not from Kirsten herself.

            The morning after the debacle with the whore, Lucas continually looks at the phone as if it has consciously betrayed him. Got up on its own and fished into the depths of itself to find the Deep Sugar agency, and order before Lucas could put a stop to it. It is a nice fantasy. Yet Lucas knows the only betrayal that was had in this apartment last night was he against himself. Or perhaps one could not even call it a betrayal, but a fight against a betrayal.  

            He tries not to think about it.

            The July day is warm, bright. The sky is pale blue and dusted with remnants of cirrus that provide no respite from the high sun as Lucas leaves his meager apartment building and hits the East Boston concrete.  Buildings not unlike his own rise about him and diminish into the long line of Bennington Street, peppered with corner stores and Chinese eateries. Cracks in the sidewalk sway beneath his shoes and, now lightly sheened in sweat, he comes to the train station. On the ride into the center of Boston, holding lightly to his phone, he receives an email, and the dark screen lights before him.

 

            _Thank you for ordering: Wondermint!_

_We at Deep Sugar strive for the happiness of our customers above all. To help us achieve our goal of universal customer satisfaction, please use the link below to send your review of last night's experience. Every review enters you in a monthly drawing for a FREE hour. Feedback from our invaluable customers not only gives you a voice but helps our staff learn how to better meet your individual needs._

_See you next time,_

_Deep Sugar_

           

            Lucas' old and resilient instinct is to attempt flipping the phone closed, and he only succeeds in jolting it from his grasp. It lands near a woman's sandaled feet beside him on the chrome expanse of the train and he bends, fishes, murmurs apologies which she seems not to notice, nose-deep in the _Globe_. Lucas shoves the phone into his side bag and tries not to consider it while getting off the train, nor on the small walk from the dingy Chinatown stop to the small cluster of buildings that is Suffolk University. The blare of horns from the intersection, the thrilled cries from the Common, do little to help this.

            His office is a dank, windowless thing in the bowels of the Rosalie Building. All the adjunct faculty inhabit such things during office hours, but Lucas feels wholly unique in that he must be the only one to live so desperately all day long.

            Or, what was it the whore said? Yes, depressing. He lives depressingly.

            There's only a brief rapping of knuckles on his door before it opens. The quickness of it pauses Lucas at his overfilled desk for a moment, as he remembers someone who knocked on his door much the same way last night. But it is only Noah Lancaster from two doors down; a greying astronomy professor whose cheerful smile is only ever belied by the somber tone of his voice. Even as Noah moves into the room, slightly shutting it behind him, he smiles in a way that might be ecstatic and leans a hand on a corner of the knotty pine desk.

            "So? Did you do it?"

            Lucas looks at his phone languishing on a stack of papers. It is blackened and silent, and looks to be promising mischief.

            "I did," says Lucas. He does not meet Noah's enlivened gaze.

            "And? Well? What'd you think? Which, uh, which cate–" He stops himself, snorts, raises a hand to wave it away. "What I mean is, was it everything I told you it'd be?"

            Lucas was sure it would come to this. Noah did, the day prior, and the weeks prior, incite him to pursue such a course. It did not take long for him to notice the tan line where once Lucas wore a wedding ring, and soon after Noah – through no fault of Lucas' own – decided they were friendly enough to warrant untoward suggestions.

            _It's not so sleazy_ , he'd said.

            _It's not like it used to be_ , he'd said.

            _Look, these places have websites now_ , he'd said, and emailed Lucas the highlighted link for Deep Sugar. Lucas shortly thereafter indulged the man –

            _Okay._

_I will try._

            Lucas looks away from the flat screen of his computer. He tries, over his glasses, to meet the man's dancing eyes. "It was fine," he says. Nods very slightly. "Thank you for the suggestion."

            Noah looks at him for a moment. They are dressed similarly, but Noah wears it better. Even with the five years or so he has on Lucas, he looks younger, less burdened. Perhaps this can be attributed to Deep Sugar. He looks back quickly over his shoulder to reassure himself of their privacy, then sets his gaze back on Lucas. "Hey," he says, leaning in, "you don't have to be so uptight. Like I said, more people use these places than you know. I mean it. And not just divorcees either."

            Lucas swallows. "I can imagine..." He searches for the word. "They incite such divorces."

            "More than you know, brother."

            Lucas makes to place his fingers above the neglected keyboard. "Thank you again."

            "My pleasure." Noah shrugs, taking a step back across the stained carpet. With just his hand on the doorknob, he looks back and says, in something nearing conspiratorial murmur: "I kind of shop around mostly. You know. Check a lot of them out at DS. Lately I've been seeing this one girl, Frivolitee. They're all remarkable. Which did you get? Maybe I know her."

            He gives it without thinking: "Wondermint."

            Noah looks up at the water-damaged ceiling. "Mm, nope. Haven't had her. Is she new, did she say?"

            Lucas shakes his head, to indicate he did not ask.

            "Well, maybe I'll run into her." He raps his knuckles twice more against the door before leaving. Lucas stares at the empty space, at where he has gone. Then back at his phone.

 

*

 

Summertime in the Rosalie Building verges on torture. Specifically for the adjunct faculty whose offices are markedly for lesser creatures – air conditioning is spotty at best, and Lucas finds desk fans too much a monetary luxury. Nearing the end of the day, he leaves the building for the muggy red dusk of the street. Cars lined out front jostle each other lightly, gunning and revving for the barest hint of green at the light. Lucas stands before the sun as it sinks golden into the lush mounds of trees littering the vast expanse of the Common.

            Through the black iron gate that lines the park, and lightly between heavy boughs, Lucas sees the easy stroll of people linked hand to hand, and children playing, and twenty-somethings not unlike his students. On the other side of the park are high-rise buildings, apartments that look down onto the Common and see the lit-up pathways at night like earthly stars. Lucas has not been in one himself. But he had seen them on the realty websites before choosing his own hovel in East Boston. Scanning the photos online, he saw the wide walls of windows, ceiling to floor, the stone balconies and the open floor plans. Modern, it said. They are called luxury suites, buildings with names like Alpine Summit and Charm Ridge. Briefly then, Lucas allowed himself to imagine living there, these lofty castles slotted in on top of one another. He imagined what it would be like to have family over, to see what has become of him in America. To see that he is trying.

            Lucas turns for the Chinatown station.

 

*

 

In his apartment, the window is thrown open. The barest hint of breeze rolls through and, Lucas hopes, carries out any rancid trash scent he is normally ignorant of. He sits on his bed, against a pillow against the wall, and in his jeans and undershirt he glances over papers in his lap.

            On the pillow next to him is his phone. He hasn't quite figured it out yet – why it keeps blinking red at him when he has already seen a message. Perhaps it is something faulty, and he could get a new one, he supposes. Go down to the Apple store and trade it in. But.

            He tries to ignore it, and goes back to the papers. He teaches Persuasive Writing in the summer catalogue, and the students who take these courses seem to be the dregs of the university. They failed in the spring, or they need an extra credit due to carelessness. Eight out of his eleven couldn't persuade a man dying of thirst to drink water. And though Lucas can understand the English on paper, when he speaks a sentence aloud it is difficult to tell whether it is grammatically correct or not. Or does that even matter? Who uses grammar correctly in this day? In this country?

            The phone continues to blink red at him.

            Lucas shifts his bare feet into the ruffle of covers near the corner of the bed. Since arriving home, he's been trying to put it out of his mind – the whore who sat here just last night. Lucas didn't notice it at the time but as he remembers, the young man smelled of summertime, like morning glories. He was bright-eyed and thin, and he sat here. For all the shabbiness of Lucas' apartment, for all of its filth and drear, Lucas is struck by the urge to wash his sheets after having had someone like that on them. It had to have been a moment of madness which drove him to it. But thankfully the universe took him in its star-strewn arms and delivered to him not a demon of his own desires but that crazed whore, who shocked him to reason. Does this prove the universe sentient? Does this prove Lucas is worth saving? He cannot say.

            But perhaps his senses have returned to him. Because he shifts his papers away, grabs his phone. He flips to his emails, and the one from Deep Sugar that has continually blinked for the better part of the day. He clicks the link and, with the flick of a thumb, presses the one star option before sending the wordless review. Gingerly setting the phone on the nightstand, he gathers his papers and starts again. From the beginning.

           

           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To new people: hello! To long-timers: y'all know who the fuck I is. Blog's linked on the profile. 
> 
> Comments are love!


	2. Changing Times

It seems like it was an eternity ago. He remembers: the quiet yawn of a morning. A weekday, a workday, a school day. The sun streaming in through wide kitchen windows, and down to the basin of linoleum. Smacking of bare feet against the floor, and the click of a dog's nails. Scent of coffee and blueberry waffles. The sweet rush of early morning air into the house at the first opening of the door; the dog scampering out into the yard. He can still see it, if he tries. It wasn't so very long ago, in the grand scheme of things. What's six months in his life? His long forty-two years? Yes, it is still clear, like a film he watched only yesterday. Afterimages in his head. Her long hair tossed over her shoulder. The flash of her blue eyes. And clearer, even, than that – the slow rumble and lurch of the middle school bus just down the road. The clank and scramble in the house, Kirsten's shout: _You'll be late if you don't hurry, øjesten._

            However, this fades when Lucas wakes. It is not quite a dream, and not quite a daydream. He hasn't figured it out yet. The immediacy of it, the churning ache in his heart, in his head, diminishes to a dull thud as he rises from the tangle of bedcovers. The apartment is dark; just one thin line of sunlight from between the curtains. Sometimes, depending on the clouds, there is not even that. He doesn't bother to open the window.

            Mornings are his own. He takes his time with himself, as if caring for a wounded animal. Rolls from one pillow to the other, then sits on the side of the bed, feet just touching the floor. He thinks of a shower, then thinks again. He goes into the kitchenette. In the fridge, there is an eggplant, some parsley, a few leftover muffins he picked up from a down-the-street café two days ago. As he attempts to make one of the muffins edible with a slab of butter, he nearly drops the knife and pastry to the ground, startled by rampant knocking at the door.

            Lucas sets them on the counter. It's just after 8 AM. In his boxers and cotton shirt, he goes to the door and leans in close enough to peer through the peephole. He can see naught but one large green eye staring back at him. The rapping starts again.

            "I know you're right there," says the voice from two nights prior. "I can see your shadow! Open the fucking door!"

            It would be unwise to let an irate whore into his home. But Lucas does not pride himself on being overly wise. He sighs, and opens the door gingerly, only to have it burst open and from the dim hall strides this young man, this Wondermint.

            Dark curls riled, he stands in the apartment with red and tired eyes. He is dressed in a deep pink button-up and jeans, a belt of Italian leather wrapped around his slim waist. His satchel hangs loosely against his thigh.

            "What the fuck is your problem?" he asks.

            Lucas says, "I do not know what you're doing here. I must ask you to go."

            "I'm not going _anywhere_ until you tell me what that fucking _one star review_ was about!" He swipes a hand through the air between them, then clenches it to a fist. "You didn't even fuck me, how can you give me _one star_? Do you know what that _does_ to me? To my _career_? Don't you have any decency?"

            Lucas furrows his brow.

            "Oh, don't play like you don't know what I'm talking about. Where is it?" He turns on a heel and goes for the nightstand, the drawers. The mussed bed.

            "What are you doing?" Lucas steps forward, hands raised unsurely.

            Wondermint rustles around in the blankets, and soon arises with Lucas' phone. He stands by the bed and scrolls through screens, only for a moment before Lucas lunges and snatches it easily from the young man's thin fingers.

            " _Hey_!"

            "This is not yours. You cannot barge in here–"

            "Admit it, then! Admit you gave me fucking one star and–"

            "Yes," Lucas says, louder than necessary. "Yes, I did it. Your company sent me harassing emails."

            Wondermint huffs. "They send out _one_ after an appointment. Harassing?"

            "Nonetheless." Lucas holds tight to his phone, wary of the whore now. " _You_ are the one harassing me now. What does it matter? As you say, we did not have sex, and so– and so, what does it matter?"

            There's a pause. The front door is still half-open, and further down the hall a door opens and shuts. Keys jingle down the corridor, and Lucas is acutely aware now that someone could be hearing this.

            Wondermint looks at him with something akin to disgust. "You really _don't_ know anything about this kind of work, do you?"

            Lucas isn't sure he would call laying on one's back _work_. Though this he does not say. Instead, he moves back for the door as he did two nights prior and says, "I don't. I am late for my work, however. I must ask you to leave."

            "You deaf? I said I'm not–"

            "Please," he says, adding, "we can continue this discussion at a better time."

            Wondermint tilts his head ever so slightly. Raises an eyebrow. His voice drips with disbelief: "We _can_?"

            "Yes."

            "At a better time."

            "As I said."

            "After your work?"

            Lucas looks back into the hall. "Yes."

            "Fine," he says, sashaying past. He stands just out of the threshold, and he looks back at Lucas with an unreadable expression. He yawns openly, not bothering to cover his mouth, and walks away. Lucas does not watch him go this time, but quickly shuts the door and latches it. He stands silently staring at the door for a moment before going back into the kitchenette and grabbing the muffin from the crumb-dusted countertop. It is hard and brittle in his grasp. It is dry and coarse in his mouth.

 

*

 

Persuasive Writing does not meet on Wednesdays. Lucas counts himself lucky that he managed to lie on his feet. In the moments after the whore's departure, he realized with something verging on horror that Wondermint may come to his apartment whenever he wishes with the address in hand. And though Lucas thought one option might have been to hole up and never exit or allow anyone entrance again, his instincts flung him through the apartment in a tizzy. He dressed, and left, double-checking the lock behind him.

            The sky is lightly dusted with clouds. Lucas walks down the main road, peering over his shoulder, wiping sweat from his brow which is not from the heat of the day. The whore must have a car, this much is certain. In the half-year Lucas has spent getting accustomed to America's northeast, he has come to know very few people who own their own cars. The adjunct group with whom he shares small-talk all, like him, take trains and cabs when it suits them. Yet, if the whore is delivering himself about the city, he must drive, and therefore could be lingering on the shoulders of this very street, watching him. The notion fills Lucas with a dread like bile and he quickly makes his way to the Orient Heights station. In the chrome cool of the train car, he allows himself to release an agitated breath. He sits in a relatively deserted car for mid-morning, and above the woman across from him hangs a glossed ad for pizza delivery: 

            _Thirty minutes or it's free._

 

*

 

The thought of spending one of his off-days in his office pales him. So too does the idea of possibly running into Noah so soon after he has been chased from his apartment by Noah's suggestion incarnate. Lucas settles for something brighter.

            He comes to the heart of the Common in all the glory of sun streaming through trees and shimmering on the shallow waters of Frog Pond. He sits in on a wood slated bench nearby, far enough to not be splashed by people frolicking in the ankle-deep water, yet close enough to see the expressions on their faces. A man stands with jean cuffs rolled to his knees, and he smiles, squints in the sun. Feet from him stands a young girl, perhaps five, perhaps six, but certainly the man's daughter. She is in a one-piece bathing suit, frilled by yellow around the thighs. Her squeal as her father splashes her with a foot is high, piercing, in the daylight. Others mill around, walking in the water, along the tiled bottom of the pond. The center fountain sprays and ticks in rhythm.

            This is all right.

            He's fine doing this. Just sitting here, in his jeans and haphazardly pulled-on brown shirt. Surely he looks no different from any other person sitting in the sun and shadow. As the sun moves in a great arch in the sky, Lucas continues to sit quietly, and from time to time he does stretch and stir his legs. He is almost a statue. One of many in the vast park, and no more harmful.

            Yes, he feels almost like himself again.

            He jolts, feeling an insistent vibration against his thigh. Looking down at the rectangular bulge in his pocket, he fishes for the phone and pulls it out blinking red. It's a text message. He has never received one on this phone before. He opens it.

 

                        +1 (617) 739-4906

                                    where r u?

 

            Lucas can only blink at it. He's heard of this before. Scammers who get your number, then somehow trick you into sending your credit card information. They say it happens through email too. Lucas sets it on his thigh, cracks his sore neck. He's been sitting here nearly all day, and his stomach rumbles idly. Perhaps–

            The vibrations again.

 

                        +1 (617) 739-4906

                                    dont fuckin ignore me damn it

 

            He looks up, around. The sky has dimmed and the light it rains down is indigo, and black in the shadow of the boughs. Lampposts on the pathways flicker to burn, and the water in the pond cools. Parents file their children out, wrapping them in towels or jackets. Lucas ruminates quietly, turning the phone's sleek black body over and over in his hand. He taps at the screen with a thumbnail, then slowly– slowly:

 

                        Me

                                    Who is this?

 

            It takes less than ten seconds. Lucas counts.

 

                        +1 (617) 739-4906

                                    barack obama. who do u think??

                                    we need 2 talk. now.

                                    where r u? i'll cum get u

 

            If Lucas were not so attached to this phone, he would toss it in the pond. He wracks his mind trying to figure out how the whore got his number, and then it hits him like an arrow in the gut: when he took the phone from the bed that morning. Flipping through screens. Lucas isn't sure he should expect more than pure devious activity from one such as him. At first, his instinct is to blame Noah. Noah, for goading him into this. For assuring him of its normalcy, its safety. Then, no, of course it isn't Noah's fault. It really is his own. He had been so good. For so long. Six months that felt like tramping through marsh slick with sludge. And that sudden moment of weakness. What was it?

            _Why am I like this?_

            Lucas stands stiffly from the bench. He rolls his shoulders back and follows the winding rolling paths to the busy corner of Tremont, and when he texts the whore, he tells him the location.

 

*

 

"Where do you work?"

            "Do not message my phone again."

            "Don't change the subject."

            "I'm not–"

            "You weren't even working, were you?"

            Lucas looks over at him. In the blaring streetlights and the soft glow of buildings they bypass, Wondermint's profile is illuminated in gold and red. The lank bounce of his curls, the soft hair on his forearm. He grips the wheel of the black Mercedes at the ten position with one hand, and the fingers of the other linger tentatively near the six. The car seats are smooth leather, though it does not smell too new. An air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror is an alabaster flower, and in the flashing lights Lucas can just make out that it says _Desert Rose_. The scent floods Lucas' senses. This must be a company car.

            When Lucas does not respond, Wondermint continues, rolling through a just-red light. "Bet you think whores are dumb by nature, huh? That you can fool me easy? Well, I've got news for you, Mickey. A lot of whores are dumb, sure. But I'm not one of them."

            A pause. Mickey? "Then why–" The words escape him, briefly. "You left me alone this morning."

            "I needed sleep," he says easily.       

            Lucas swallows. He looks to his right out into the simmering night. People on the sidewalks begin to meld together; white skin against brown skin against black skin, until they blur into one single line and the sidewalks become the curving white walls of the Sumner Tunnel. Looking back at the driver, he looks to be very still. His chest does not rise or fall, and he stares straight ahead. Lucas realizes he is holding his breath just as they exit the tunnel and Wondermint exhales.

            "I'm not allowing you back into my home," Lucas says.

            "Some home! You mean that rat's den? Sad excuse for a fuck pad. I've seen a lot of dingy apartments and hotel rooms, but man, I might've slashed my wrists if I'd had to fuck you in _that_ one." He snorts laughter at Lucas' subsequent glare. "I'm kidding, Mickey. Jesus."

            Lucas looks at him again, one eyebrow raised.

            "We don't have to talk there. You don't have to talk at all. But you need to listen to me," he says, wheeling onto the A-1. "What you said this morning– I'd been thinking about it. What's it matter? You asked that. You didn't fuck me, so your ridiculous one star doesn't really mean a thing. _I_ know that." The lights overhead are too bright for the stars. Lucas cranes his neck up but still he cannot see them. "I got chewed out early this morning when I just got off another appointment. Nasty surprise after working my ass off all night. Got asked what the fuck I did to you to make you so damned ornery!"

            "Who– who chewed you out?" he asks, testing the euphemism for himself.

            The smooth turn from Bennington into Blue Winery Apartments, just past the office building that stands as sentry to those dilapidated things behind. Lucas has walked the sidewalk he now rides beside hundreds of times. The shadows move with the trees and the Mercedes comes to stop just in front of building F.

            "Who do you think?" Wondermint asks.

            Lucas looks at him, and both of them are drenched in shadow. "I don't know."

            Wondermint inhales, exhales forcefully, and flops back against the soft leather of the seat. "I don't care about your stupid language barrier, or any chip you've got on your shoulder about guy whores. Bottom line is, you're fucking with my reputation." He glances sidelong at Lucas. Clears his throat lightly, and miraculously the coarse flippancy of his voice diminishes. In strange reminiscence of his first tone from nights before – bright and courteous – he says, "In respect for our dissatisfied patron, I'd like to extend an invitation for you to make a formal complaint."

            Lucas can feel his expression changing into one of complete confusion. "What?"

            Wondermint groans. He slams a hand down, unlocking the doors, and Lucas begins to unbuckle himself hurriedly. "Tomorrow," Wondermint says as he exits, "you're going to meet Daddy, and we're going to straighten my rating out."

            Lucas barely has both feet on the concrete before the car is rolling away.

 

*

 

It is 12:03 AM. The time blinks at him in red from the digital face of his alarm clock. The thing has been in disuse since the arrival of his new phone. A long time ago, he never would have dreamed he could wake to some wordless morning tune on his phone at a time he'd prepared. He supposes the times have changed.

            He cannot sleep. Though he's tried – wrapped himself in soft blankets long overdue for a wash. In his comfortable pajamas of plaid boxers and cotton shirt, he lies in bed and looks at the ceiling and the phone on his nightstand in turn. Somewhere, across the city, Wondermint lies in a bed too.

            Lucas heaves a sigh and grabs his phone. He finds the email sent to him, and clicks the link to the Deep Sugar website. In the pitch dark of his apartment, his face lights up in a cold blue. Without his glasses, he squints to see the page before him, the tabs below the blinking bold font that says the company's name with the R's extending leg curling out and looping in on itself, then running under the length of the name. Lucas clicks on a tab that says _Categories_.

            He scrolls further, lying on his stomach with a pillow bunched up into his underarms and against his chest. This section is wholly different from the process of ordering. Yes, here are the categories, and Lucas cringes to think how he could have misread them, and yet – there are not only the names listed beneath the bar but a small photo beside each. Lucas squints harder in the blinding florescence. Nothing graphic. Beside Wondermint's name is a picture of him sitting upright in a cherry wood chair, before a wide window seeping with sunlight. His eyes bright, his hands folded in his lap. Clothes pressed, chin tilted upward. And just the hint of an impish smile. So very far removed from the shadowy sneer given in the Mercedes. His name is aglow in cyan and when Lucas presses it, the page switches to something called _live-feed reviews_. Below:

 

 

            5/5 stars                                                                                                          

                        I am not sure how I've lived in Boston so long without having ordered from Deep Sugar! Their stock is easily on par with the agencies in LA and NYC. Any agency that could employ Wondermint is mainline. He's gorgeous, cordial, and gives off the air of being both experienced and fresh. I'd order him every night if I had the money. I may even do it and go into bankruptcy. Well worth it. – L

 

 

            5/5 stars                                                                                                          

                        I wish I could give him more than five stars. He arrived on time, and from the moment he walked in, he looked at me like he wanted me. Like he needed me. It was like I hadn't paid. Or like I'd paid more. Stunning. – Y.W.

 

 

            4/5 stars                                                                                                          

                        Recc'd by my brother-in-law. I told Wondermint what I wanted and he took to it like a pro though I do think he was untrained in my particular affinities. I would ask that DS train their whores in all facets of the game so that they come prepared – but what he lacked in training, he more than made up for with enthusiasm. A gorgeous boy. – O

 

 

            1/5 stars                                                                                                          

 

 

            Though there are fresh reviews from the previous night, Lucas stops here. He runs his bottom lip between his teeth, gnawing at it. He does not think he could speak English right now even if threatened. He exits from the website, sets the phone face-down on the nightstand and flops onto his back again. He doesn't sleep for hours.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts appreciated!


	3. Mr. Mickey

Boston Common is shrouded in a cobalt sunset, threaded with roseate clouds. Summer is in full bloom and on the lighting walkways through the park, throngs of twenty-somethings and teenagers and children spend their dusk-to-evening. There is a lingering scent on the air of fried dough and charred meat from where now-departed food trucks wandered in and set up camp on the grasses, leaving behind wheel marks, irregular tire-tread and napkins fluttering in the light breeze. The twenty-somethings, shrill in their calling to one another, meander by and they remind Lucas of his students.

            Classes for the summer interim are coming to a close. His Persuasive Writing class met just hours ago in a sun-drenched day. He is quite sure few of them heard a word he said. They stared out of the wide windows at the side of the room, and their eyes were hazy, half-lidded. One of them nearest the front asked about their paper grades. Lucas deflected the question.

            Little has been able to get done since the arrival of the whore. Lucas has given up shifting blame: his co-worker, himself, his phone, the universe. Weakness. Come what may, he is here, and now Lucas must cast him out if he is to return to the wraith-filled tomb that is his life. He stands on the corner of Tremont again, for just this purpose. Minutes ago, he texted the whore to come pick him up on this corner again, as he had the night before. Lucas is not so stupid – he will not allow himself to be picked up near the Rosalie Building or the Suffolk flags waving in the breeze. It's bad enough the whore knows his home address, his phone number.

            But it should be remedied soon.

            The Mercedes pulls up, its black finish gleaming under the sorbet sky. Cars beep loudly and swerve around it, and the locks pop. When Lucas slides into the passenger's side, he is met with the fresh scent of spring flowers. It soon becomes overpowering, and he realizes Wondermint has soaked himself in some sort of perfume.

            Lucas tries to roll down the windows.

            "The fuck are you up to?" Wondermint asks.

            "The– the scent," he says, nearly gasping. "Must you wear so much?"

            Wondermint groans in an exaggerated manner. He cranks up the air conditioner and blasts it at Lucas who shivers. " _God_ , you are rude. Is that just your personality or something? You don't like my cologne, you give me one star when you're moody–"

            "I was not–"

            "You suck to be around pretty much."

            Lucas and Wondermint ride on in silence. The radio is turned down but barely emitting some bass-heavy music which further frustrates Lucas. The lights pass over them, the city burns brighter and brighter. The sun's fiery tip is just visible over the trees of the quickly diminishing Common. They move from Chinatown and into Back Bay, where the buildings rise high and men in suits line the streets. Lucas has not been here but once for the Farmers Market in Copley Square. He'd come to buy fresh vegetables, better than the wilting, shriveled things at the local shop. Yet the prices were almost confusing. _Buying local is expensive, but better. You know they put wax in your food, don't you?_ said the proprietor of a zucchini stand. He said something else about GMOs which Lucas didn't catch, and he walked home, thinking of fruit and vegetables in Denmark.

            "We're here."

            Lucas looks up, jolted. The Mercedes is parallel parked on a street-side, before a grand building built entirely of glass. Lucas rises out of the car and sees his reflection staring back from across the paved sidewalk. Outside, box gardens of wild flowers grow, and at each corner embedded in the ground are small lights. Lucas stares up, eyebrows furrowed, trying to count the floors.

            "Let's go," Wondermint says, striding past. Lucas follows him into the lobby of the building. It is almost cold. They walk across glossed floors in which are mirrored the great chandelier hanging above. Like a shooting star. Lucas is staring at it as the elevator doors close, as Wondermint reaches forward and presses F12. The elevator starts its slow ascent.

            The back of the elevator is glass as well, and Lucas turns to look at the vast expanse of the city lights below. People walk along the sidewalks and look like beetles. Touching the glass with hesitant fingertips, he says, "You said this is my chance to complain."

            "Yep."

            "Yet you know the fault lies with me."

            "Yep."

            "Then what am I here to complain about?"

            "Daddy believes in customer service," he says, and says nothing more until they arrive to the twelfth floor. The doors open and the smaller lobby lies before them, a soft glow from the ceiling lights. Cream colored sofas and armchairs make a semi-circle in front of a shimmering walnut desk. The room's corners are dotted with potted palms, and Lucas thinks he must have stumbled into a doctor's office.

            "Hey, Will!"

            Lucas looks over to see a young brown-haired girl behind the receptionists' desk. She looks to be Wondermint's age, perhaps twenty. She waves wildly at the two of them and Wondermint shushes her.

            " _Abigail_ , there's a _guest_ here," he whisper-shouts, pointing violently at Lucas.

            Her eyes widen, her pursed mouth shutting. She opens it quickly again, grinning. "Sorry! Hey, Wondermint! Good evening, Mr. Mickey! Can I get you anything? Water? Raspberry tea? Merlot?"

            Lucas looks over at the whore beside him. _Will?_

            "We don't have time for that. Is Daddy ready to see us?"

            Abigail cranes her neck forward, brown hair falling across the pleated collar of her dress shirt. Against the other wall and down into a partially hidden corridor lie closed doors with golden handles. Abigail says he should be done in a moment and the whore walks closer to chat with her. Lucas stands in the middle of the room, and cannot tell if what he is feeling is confusion or dull surprise. He did suppose Wondermint was not the whore's real name. How shameful must such a job be that one cannot associate their given name with it? But _Will_. Lucas expected something less normal, if he is pressed to think he had expected anything at all.

            The closest door opens with a flourish, and dark hair flashes. There is a woman there, who says, "Goodbye, Daddy," and exits the room, shutting it quietly behind her. When she turns around, Lucas is confronted with another of similar age to Wondermint – Will? should he call him Will? – and she is pale and doe-eyed, a rosebud for a mouth. Abigail waves her attention towards Lucas. "A guest!"

            The woman smiles and nods graciously. "Mr. Mickey, a pleasure."

            Will rolls his eyes heavily and groans in that way of his. The woman seems to take note of it but clicks in her red heels past him, as if he is a ghost.

            "Abigail, I'm on call now. See you later."

            "Bye bye."

            She goes to the elevator, and before Lucas can watch the doors close, Will has taken him by the wrist and pulled him to the office door. He knocks quickly, the rapping of his knuckles, and opens it before there is a response. Pulled in, Lucas cannot adjust to the lushness of the office before he is maneuvered across toffee carpeting and into a seat in front of the wide Parnian desk. The chairs are deep, lush, leather, like the Mercedes outside.

            Will dumps himself into the seat to Lucas' left. Before them, across the glass top of the desk, is a bespectacled man, blond hair cycloned atop his head. He does not look much younger than Lucas. His eyes are sky blue, and he regards the two of them as if they are family members, come for a visit.

            Lucas has a headache. He remembers he has not had anything to eat since his sparse lunch just before class. He was too unnerved to eat then.

            Will extends a hand. "Daddy, this is the Mickey we talked about. Mickey, this is Mason Verger, president of Deep Sugar." He sounds bored, but there is a lulled cadence to it: "Mickey would like to make a formal complaint and explain the circumstances of the one star review."

            "Mr. One Star," says Mason, hands folded together on the desk. His pressed shirt, his baby blue vest, shifts with his movements. "Have I been wanting to meet you. Always exciting to talk to a first-time customer."

            Lucas is being looked at expectantly. He shrugs and says, "An only-time customer."

            Will bristles and Mason snorts laughter. "Right, right! Only-time, that's funny. Listen. I'm so sorry to hear about your bad experience. Wondermint told me about the categorical confusion. I take the fall for that one. Really, I do. Marketing has been on me to change them up for months, Boston being such a big intake for immigrants. Misunderstandings are common, you know. Don't feel embarrassed. Why don't you let me know what we can do for you?"

            Lucas isn't sure if he is being insulted or not. He says, "I would like to apologize. For damaging Wondermint's rating. Yet..." He glances over at young man beside him, whose countenance is unreadable. "Yet I really should not be sent harassing emails."

            Will looks at the ceiling. " _Oh_ my god."

            Mason holds up a hand. "Hey, what's with that attitude? We have to hear him out. Wondermint, where're your manners?"

            He blinks widely, then sighs. "Sorry, Daddy."

            "Sir, you were saying about the emails."

            Lucas looks down at his brown shoes. "Nothing. He is right – the mistake is mine. I do not wish to be further trouble. Please erase my review. We didn't do anything, so–"

            Will fidgets in his seat, and Mason's expression shifts into one of confusion.

            "Sorry, sorry – I must've misheard you. The accent, you know. Not your fault, but it's hella thick."

            "Sure," Lucas says.

            "You didn't fuck Wondermint?" When nothing is said, Mason looks to Will. "Why didn't I hear about this?"

            "I was gonna say, Daddy–"

            "Well, obviously the one star is null and void if you didn't even _try_ him."

            "Of course," says Lucas, his cheeks burning with heat.

            The room is quiet. Lucas cannot read Mason's expression. He wonders if Will can. Looking briefly to his left, Lucas sees on Will's face a small amount of discomfort mixed with something else – strange on a grown man, but it looks nearly like pouting. Lucas remembers such an expression on a much younger face, and not so very long ago.

            "I want to rescind my one star review," says Lucas, no longer able to stand the silence. He motions lightly to the whore beside him. "It was unfair."

            "Gallant of you, Mickey, hella gallant," says Mason. "It's just that – well, policy, you know. It's the live feed reviews that set us apart from our competitors in the area. They do that, you know. They mess with reviews, finagle customers, write mock-ups. I've seen them. I know they hire people for just such a cause – and isn't that a damn shame? Why, it's un-American. Cheating folks with dishonest reports." He nods to himself, as if neither Will nor Lucas are present. He looks at the ceiling, leaning slightly back in the chair. "So, me messing with the reviews, it's something I just can't do."

            Will exhales a small breath. He is glaring furtively at Lucas from under dark curls. Lucas can only stare blankly back.

            _But what can I do? I've done all I can_ , he wants to say.

            "Mickey," Mason says, returning his gaze finally to Lucas sitting sullen before him, "I appreciate your honesty. Wondermint does too. Right?"

            Will grunts.    

            "For your trouble, we'll send you something nice in your inbox."

            Lucas refocuses, slightly aghast. "No, please, no more–"

            "Goodbye, Mickey," Mason says, and waves a hand at Lucas. Though he looks only at Will. "I'm sure we'll meet again."

            _We will not_ , thinks Lucas. But he does not make issue. He rises from the seat, and in standing he realizes how tired he is. Sleep has not come easily lately. At reaching the office door, he looks back at Will, who does not look to be moving anytime soon. So much for getting a ride home. Without a word, he exits the room, and the lobby, and the building. On the street, he looks back up at it standing like a lighthouse against the blackened sky.

 

*

 

In the last days of July, the rains come. Not the unexpected April showers remembered, nor the cooling rains in Denmark that dampened all the foliage surrounding his small house in the country, but hard and torrential rains that seem, of all things, threatening. Thunderheads rise off in the distance, and the clouds fall and envelope the summits of Boston's tall buildings. Lucas, while taking the trash out, while grading papers, while on the receiving ends of Noah's incessant chattering, thinks of the office building in which sat the Deep Sugar headquarters. He wonders if the waterlogged clouds envelope that as well.

            In the Rosalie Building, in a small inlet where a coffeepot and sauce-dotted microwave sit, Lucas leans his hip against the counter and waits for his coffee to reheat. His third cup this day, and he is still not fully alert. Sleep has come easier since the whore's departure. Yet he finds he can hardly get enough of it.

            "So have you heard of Artisyn?"

            Lucas jolts and the microwave beeps. Noah is in front of him, standing with his own mug of lukewarm coffee. His mug has a picture of a chicken, holding up a sign that says, _Eat more veggie soup!_

            "Artisyn?" Lucas asks. "I don't think so. What is that?"

            "It's one of DS's whores. I thought–"

            Lucas looks around wildly, searching the desolate hall for faculty or students. Outside, dimly, the rain can be heard pattering against awnings and umbrella tops.

            Noah moves in closer. Smiling. "Relax. What'd I tell you before? Lots of people are into it. Mainstream, I said. Look–" He shifts his coffee mug from hand to the counter. He pulls his phone from his back pocket and shows an email to Lucas. "See? They're even starting train ads soon."

            Lucas' eyes scan the email. Reading further, and more closely, he sees that Noah is signed up for their newsletter. In Lucas' pocket, his phone is dormant, though he has recently deleted a special email sent from the account of Mason Verger himself. He offered Lucas a gaudy and nicely-worded coupon for a free hour from any category he chose. He has wondered where emails go when they are deleted. From the inbox, and then the trash file. Where does data go when it's gone?

            Whispering now, despite his earlier claim: "This is going to be huge. Imagine that. We won't have to hide this kind of thing anymore. It'll be totally normal."

            _Why is that a good thing?_ Lucas looks up into Noah's stormy eyes. "I don't think I'll be ordering again."

            "It's just shame," Noah says. "I had that after my first time too. You get over it."

            Lucas says nothing.

            "I've got one ordered for tonight. Artisyn. You should see her reviews. Nothing but fives." His eyes are unfocused, even as he looks at Lucas. As if he is looking through Lucas, and the back of his skull, and the walls, and plaster and pipes, out into the grey afternoon.

 

*

 

Sometime in the night, Lucas is beset once again by late-onset sleep. He stares up at the cracks in his ceiling, amidst ruffled covers and he wishes Noah had not told him of his order. Because now he cannot help but wonder – when? Was it hours ago? Or has it yet to happen? Or is it right at this moment? Is it happening even as Lucas is thinking– these– very– words?

            He has not seen the girl himself, but he can imagine. Imagine it. What would it be like?

            The girl, Artisyn, knocking at Noah's door. Dressed simply, but beautifully, with a satchel hanging over her shoulder. Lucas has not seen Noah's home and so he conjures for himself a place that is both modest and warm. He conjures Noah in his work attire, of fitted shirt and slacks. Shoes kicked off somewhere in the home. He welcomes the girl in.

            How many times has Noah done this? A thousand times. A thousand thousand. He would allow the girl inside, and compliment her beauty. And shut the door behind her. Lucas' experience is limited here, he– he cannot know what is meant to happen next. He only can imagine her strolling in, as Will did more than a week ago. Seating herself on his couch and lengthening the lines of her body, accentuating the curves of it, the little inlets and dips. And Noah walking over to her.

            Normal, he'd said. This will soon be normal.

            Soon, sleep finds Lucas, or Lucas finds it.

 

*

 

The tan line of his wedding ring has all but faded. He does still have the ring. It is in the back of his closet, beneath a pile of clothes, in a box with other small trinkets. Months ago, on the eve of his departure from his home, he saw Kirsten toss hers into the lake long behind their property. She stood looking after it on an overcast day much like today. And from inside the house, Lucas turned from the window and moved over the worn floorboards of the kitchen. He went back into the hall and the rooms there, branching off like willow limbs. In the back, there on the left, was a closed door, a boy's room bereft of its boy. He'd gone to stay with Kirsten's parents, until Lucas left.

            Lucas jolts at the insistent buzzing at his side. He looks up to find himself standing, dripping lightly, in the middle of a grocery store aisle, in front of rows of jams. His umbrella is soaked still, hanging in his hand-basket along with a package of muffins and butter. Lucas' glasses are lightly misted. He takes his phone from his pocket.

 

                        +1 (617) 739-4906

                                    heyy

 

            Lucas stares down at it, then looks up, around. People walk around him unawares. They don't know who has texted him, who he is, what he's done. He looks like an average person in the New Age, eyes boring into his ever-beeping phone. Normality.

 

                        Me

                                    What do you want?

 

            Lucas begins to put the phone into his pocket, but it vibrates again. Lucas cannot fathom being so quick at this. The tiny buttons on the screen run into one another, blur for him. Or he just has large finger pads.

 

                        +1 (617) 739-4906

                                    fuckin rude as hell.

                                    just seeing how ur doing

                                    that a crime?

 

            Lucas sighs. He takes from the shelf a jar of apricot jam. It's a _mason_ jar. He can't escape it, it seems.

 

                        Me

                                    I'm fine.

 

            He pauses.

 

                        Me

                                    And you?

                        +1 (617) 739-4906

                                    fine

                                    guess what?

                        Me

                                    What?

                        +1 (617) 739-4906

                                    i got the night off

                        Me

                                    How is that?

 

            People are having to walk around him. Lucas presses himself against a shelf, and holds his phone at a curious angle to prevent peeping.

 

                        +1 (617) 739-4906

                                    whores get time off too

                                    its not fuckin slavery

 

            Lucas rolls his eyes. And for a long time, nothing else comes. Lucas supposes Will has wandered off somewhere, which suits him. He puts the phone away and goes about the store, to finish his bare bones shopping. In the rain, carrying bags home is worse, especially considering the paper bags the store uses. And just as he makes his way to the front of the store, where the glass doors open like the gates of Heaven before him, there is that vibration again. Before stepping into the rain, Lucas reads it.

 

                        +1 (617) 739-4906

                                    wanna hang out?

           

           

          

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Kenan voice* Aw, here it goes!!


	4. Little Children

Lucas does not respond to the text right away. In some form, it can be said he does not rightly respond at all. He is home again and dry and the groceries are in their proper places. He looks at the phone sitting idle and ebony on the nightstand, and he attempts chores. He takes the trash out, though it continually drizzles. The dumpster between buildings G and H is near to overflowing with black garbage bags humped like monsters along dreary moors. He forces his in on top of it. His grip slips, _he_ slips, and comes near to falling. So overcome is he by the rank stench of the secluded inlet that his mind flashes, instantly, to when he was but a child. So very long ago. When he was younger than Will. When he was younger than his son.

            His own father sat with him in Brussels, on a crowded bus. They'd spent all the hot day on that cramped thing. They were passing through, on their way from one city to another. To visit sisters, his father had said. To help with hard times. They departed the bus in the thick of the downtown, and Lucas held his father's hand. This section of the town was doused in such a sour smell. Like garbage, like rain, like sewage. It lingered in his nostrils for days, that scent. The dinginess of it. That very precise ripe high. Women in various states of undress lingered in the doorways as they passed; they called out to his father – Lucas knows that, looking back. But at the time, at such an age, Lucas remembers feeling embarrassed, ashamed. Thinking they were calling out to him, of all things.

            Lucas is wet again, and he goes back inside.

            Brushing his teeth in the smallness of his bathroom, he looks at the wall blocking his view from his bed, the nightstand. As if he could see through it. He has wandered around the small apartment as if in a waltz with an unmoving partner. It's hard to tell if that partner is Will or the phone.

            He looks at himself in the mirror above the sink. Glasses slightly askew, brown-ashen hair lank and lackluster. Mouth bubbling with toothpaste.

            What are the rules of such things? Lucas doesn't know how much time he is allowed to think of an answer. To send an answer. How strange. Were he speaking to the whore in person, he wouldn't have a dilemma like this – and if he were speaking to the whore in person, he would have easily said no and left it at that.

            Lucas can barely fathom what that means. What that entails. _Hang out_? And do what?

            Free of toothpaste and with a freshly washed face, Lucas moves into bed. Between the covers, he feels safer, secure. He folds his glasses onto the nightstand and retrieves from there his phone, which is silent and still, empty. He looks at Will's text again, which was sent now six hours ago. Whatever statute of limitations there are, surely Lucas has passed it. But then, Will did say he had only the night off. Lucas thinks for a moment, then begins to text.

 

                        Me

                                    Sorry, I did not see this message. But now I am in bed and cannot hang out.

 

            Lucas almost places it back on the nightstand but it immediately begins vibrating. In the dark of the room, his face is aglow in florescence.

 

                        +1 (617) 739-4906

                                    asshole u kno i can tell u read it earlier right?

 

            This could be bluffing. Then again, it could not. Lucas sighs.

 

                        Me

                                    I did not know that. 

                        +1 (617) 739-4906

                                    lol jesus ur so old

                                    hang out w me 2morro b4 work

Me

My work?

                        +1 (617) 739-4906

                                    no u fool, mine

 

            Lucas' hand is numbing from the constant vibrations. To get them to stop, he says yes.

 

*

 

One of the perks of being adjunct in the summer term is the overwhelming wealth of free time. One could say almost as much as the students', though where it sounds like a luxury it is quite often a curse. Lucas has been a slave to his own freedom for months. Long bereft of his motherland and his family. Given only this phone to satiate him, to know that once it graced the hands of his son. He has spent far too long in his own company, and perhaps getting out and _hanging out_ with someone besides the shabby insides of his own mind would be good for him. Still, he wishes it were someone else.

            Around 3 PM, Lucas was texted the address of a café in Chinatown. He is meant to arrive at 4 PM, and does so. Though all the way from his house to Orient Heights, and from there to Chinatown, he thinks about ways he could have gotten out of it. Simply stopped responding. But then the whore would have cause to come to the apartment and throw a tantrum as he has before. As such, Lucas feels pinned. He can only hope that this meeting of theirs is for some sense of closure. Perhaps Lucas can do something to help his own cause – he thinks, as he walks through the bleakness under cover of his black umbrella, that he can add to the portrait of himself as a boring older man. The whore should lose interest in toying with him if, when poked, Lucas does little more than stare ahead. That should work.

            Lucas is, above all things, a father. And he knows the ways of riotous young boys. He knows it well.

            He walks into the Thinking Cup café which is not far from Suffolk on the sides of the Common. Being near his workplace puts him on edge. He shakes his umbrella out near the entrance, and finds the place moderately filled. Will, pale as sea foam, stands out amidst the patrons. A black button up, jeans, curls slicked back. Not so unlike how he looked in Lucas' apartment. He has a small, two-chaired table to himself at the back corner of the room.

            Lucas sits before him, noting that Will's chair is slightly plush and Lucas' own is bare hardwood.

            "Jesus, you look terrible," says Will, over a steaming latte. He places it back down on the ceramic saucer. "Have you been sleeping okay?"

            Lucas frowns. "What's this meeting about?"

            "Meeting? This isn't a meeting. I told you – we're hanging out."

            "But why?"

            Will sighs, and waves a hand in the air over towards the baristas. Lucas glances back at them and is recaptured by Will's voice: "Hey, you know my name. My real one, not my whore one."

            Lucas blanches, looking around to see if anyone has heard.

            "So what's yours? I can't just call you Mickey all the time."

            All the time? "It's–" He pauses, hesitant. This may open a few doors.

            "Oh, come on. You're not a secret agent. I bet your name is super terrible."

            "Lucas," he says.

            Will snorts. "Told you."

            Before Lucas can reply, a latte similar to Will's is sat before him. The foam is formed into a maple leaf. Lucas looks down into it and feels his face contort into some expression – he doesn't know what it is, even when Will begins laughing at him.

            "Ah, God, that _face_. What's wrong with you? Don't you get out? Oh, never mind, that's a dumb question. Of course you don't. I can tell."

            "If you brought me here plainly to insult me–"

            "Oh, please. I could've done that over the phone." Will sips again from his latte in such a way – such a way that Lucas thinks it must be feigned. His pinky is extended, even. When he sits the cup back down, he leans in minutely. "Lucas. Let's be friends."

            Lucas blinks. "What?"

            "Friends – I want to be your friend."

            "Why would you–"

            "You're the _last_ person who oughtta be looking this kind of offer in the mouth." Will raises his hands in a placating manner. "Come on, what's the problem? You're new here, I bet. I could show you around, I could teach you stuff."

            "I've been here for half a year. I know what America is."

            "And yet you don't know what colts are," he taunts.

            Lucas pauses. Outside, against the wide window of the Thinking Cup, the rain comes down in sheets and the street is naught but an oil painting running. The blur of red and green streetlights. A poncho flaring in the high wind.

            He says, in a voice nearing a whisper, "Even your boss said they are confusing."

            "Daddy was saying that so you didn't feel dumb. Everyone knows the differences between colts and fillies, mares and stallions. How can you confuse them?" Will leans one elbow on the tabletop, beside his now empty cup. Chin in hand, eyes half-lidded. "I'm the best colt there is. You couldn't find a better friend in all Boston."

            Lucas can feel heat in his neck, in his face. He clenches one fist on the table. "And what makes you certain I need a friend?"

            "Because you're lonely," Will says, too quick. Like he expected that. His voice is soft, and the music sifting down from overhead almost covers it: "Mickeys are lonely. That's just the way it is."

            "I'm Lucas, not Mickey."

            "Uh huh," he says. He pulls out his phone, flicks through screens. "Ah," he sighs, rising from the chair. He slings his leather satchel over his shoulder, which Lucas had not noticed sitting by the chair legs. "I'm on call. I get off around 3 AM. Text me." With that, he starts to leave.

            Text him at 3 AM? Lucas will do no such thing. But he watches Will go through the glass door and meet with the oncoming rains. He has no umbrella, and he stands briefly very still and is likely getting soaked to the bone. Then he takes off running, towards the end of the street where his Mercedes is parked. For a long moment, Lucas thinks he is stuck with the bill until he realizes Will had already paid for both.

 

*

 

On the rainy train ride back to East Boston, Lucas looks through the windows when the car rolls above ground. The power lines like inky strings against the blueblack sky. From now until 3 AM, Will is going to be traipsing about the city, from apartments and hotel rooms and lofts, in beds all manner of hard and soft and downy and cheap. Lucas supposes it would only be right to feel bad for him. But Lucas has too much to feel bad about already. He cannot add a wayward whore onto that list.

 

*

 

It's 9:56 PM. The apartment is little more than the likeness of a post-hurricane area. There are clothes on the floor, and a shirt hanging over one arm of the lit floor lamp. Two empty beer bottles sit on the nightstand, beside a half-full microwave popcorn bag and balled up tissues from Lucas' hour-ago sneezing fit. In his ruffled bed, he sits with his back against the wall, a pillow on his lap, and papers on top of that. He hasn't been to his office in days, afraid of running into Noah in a chatty mood. He can work like this. He always has been good at working away from a desk.

            When there's a knock at the door, Lucas straightens his hunchback posture and stares incredulously at it. It cannot be. Will is meant to be off whoring; he cannot be here. And to do what? To beg friendship from him? Lucas should pretend to be away.

            But the knock – it's different. Not the airy rapping of knuckles that Will rains down on him; but playful, with a beat, like a song. It happens again. Lucas wonders if it is too late to turn off the lights. On the third knock, he levels his gaze under the door, at the shadow creeping there. He heaves himself from the bed in a tangle of nearly bare legs. He wears but a cotton shirt and boxers and he peers carefully into the peephole. Not a green eye stares back but just a dark-haired head; no curls, and far more of it. Lucas gingerly opens the door.

            It's her – Lucas recognizes her immediately. The woman from the office, who came from Mason Verger's room. She stands in engine-red heels and a black dress, hemmed at pale thighs. A black satchel strapped between her breasts.

            "Good evening, Mr. Mickey," she says in a tone of cheer. She smiles. "May I come in?"

            "There must be some mistake," Lucas says, half-hiding behind the door.

            "I assure you, there's been no mistake."

            And she walks in, as Will had, as Will is wont to do, it seems. Perhaps it is a whore thing. She makes her way into the dreary of the apartment and Lucas is ashamed anew. She stands pleasantly enough among the place, though rippling through the calm of her expression is some disgust. Lucas has seen the expression too severely. It cannot hide from him.

            Lucas says, "I know your boss sent me a free appointment, but really–"

            "I'm Artisyn, and I haven't been sent by Daddy." She holds out her arms. "Quite the opposite, I came to see you myself, Mr. Mickey."

            "How did you get this address?"

            "It's in our database. Strictly for marketing purposes, you understand."

            "You call this marketing?"

            "I do." She motions for him to shut the door.

            He does it under great duress. Moving forward, he says, "Perhaps I have been unclear. I have no intention of hiring a whore, it was a mistake."

            "I know, I know, don't trouble yourself. You ordered Wondermint, and were disappointed. You misread the categories, it's all right. You got a colt, you wanted a filly." In one smooth motion, she unburdens herself – drops the bag on the ground and unsnaps one buckle behind the dark waterfall of her hair. The dress comes undone and slides down to pool at her heels. Her bra, her underwear, are the same shade of red as the shoes, and she steps over her previous skin and makes her way to Lucas. When she kisses the hard line of his mouth, he thinks, _Why does this keep happening?_

            Artisyn seems trying to ignore Lucas' lack of motion. She perseveres – in another time, in another place, Lucas would admire this quality. He's admired it in his students, on the rare occasion he's seen it in them. Eventually, he puts a stop to it, his hands clutching her soft white shoulders. He forces her apart from him.

            "You misunderstand," he says.

            She's giggling. She grabs him by the shoulders as well, and Lucas is caught off-guard; she turns him for the bed, forces him to sit on its edge. Like a lamb, she plops into his lap, his forearm just behind her knees, her arms fastened around his neck.

            Nuzzling his ear, she says, "I hear you're a tough critic, Mr. Mickey. Let me assure you, you aren't unjust. I saw Wondermint's review on his feed – it's more than he deserves, really. He gets pity stars, and he's brash and annoying. This ought to take him down a peg. It's the best thing to be done with him really."

            "I'm not a critic at all!"

            "Of course not. A connoisseur then."

            Lucas' mind has been a rush of embarrassment and worry since her entrance – and only now does he place her name. The one Noah ordered. All five stars.

            He looks at her, or tries to, as she is sucking lightly on his earlobe. He shakes her loose and says, "You are the one with the high ratings, aren't you? I thought– Artisyn–"

            "So you _have_ heard of me," she says, eyes wide in enthrallment. She clenches him tighter. "I knew it. I knew I'd make a name for myself. Do you know my regular clients? What're my best attributes? What've you heard on the street?"

            "I haven't heard anything. I'm not interested."

            "Don't be silly."

            Lucas stands. Artisyn falls from his lap unceremoniously onto the floor with a thud and a shriek. He walks over her, and opens the door once more, only to see two of his neighbors walking by to their apartment. They freeze then stare inside at the half-dressed whore on the floor, and Lucas slams the door shut again.

            "Please get dressed and leave," he says.

            Artisyn is already standing, though wobbling, on her heels. Her face is slightly red, and Lucas thinks it is more from anger than anything else.

            "Is this the wrong category as well?" she cries. "You really want mares? Have you even seen them? They're old, you know."

            "Get dressed."

            Her eyes widen, darken. She is smiling, and says in a melodic voice, "You have no idea the things I could do to you."

            "I'm sure I don't."

            Artisyn purses her mouth, and Lucas is certain she's pouting. It strikes him suddenly and again – how very much like little children they are. Twenties, easy, but they might as well be ten years old. Mason Verger should be ashamed.

            At that thought, Lucas nearly laughs, but it comes out like a sob. His eyes are red. Lucas is, above all things, a hypocrite. He watches as Artisyn wiggles back into her dress, picks up her satchel. She storms across the room to him, as if she would smack him. But she reaches into the bag and pulls out a card. Lucas looks at it briefly: the Constantia print of her name, Artisyn, and beneath are her cell phone number and something called a Twitter with _Art1syn_ by it. She shoves it into his hand.

            "I see," she says, and her tone is soft, understanding. "I think I get how you are. We could be friends, you know. Text me."

            She opens the door, leaving quickly. Lucas looks at the card, then the door, then the card.

            And he thinks, _Oh._   

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why does this keep happening?


	5. Night Shift

It is nearing 5 PM and the sun is going down. A hazy line blurs the trees into the sun just outside of the train car window. Lucas stands amidst the post-work crowd on the way out of the inner city and towards East Boston. The brilliant orange seeps into the car and covers him and his brown clothes. Filters into his hazel eyes. To the left of him, a child is crying; young, maybe two, in his mother's arms. She tries to calm him, but his face is red and he is squalling. Fists bunched at his sides.

            Will looked like that an hour ago in the Thinking Cup.

            Lucas invited him there through text in the morning – the whore was somewhere, wherever it is whores go, asleep, his body healing from the long night shift of sex. When he woke, he texted Lucas back and agreed to meet him at the same café – _i knew it u like me already!_

            In the warm coffee scents of the small room, surrounded by dark lacquered wood and university students where Will only looked too at-home, Lucas sat opposite of him and planted his phone on the table between them.

            Will looked down at it, one eyebrow raised. "I didn't notice before, but is that an iPhone4? They still make those?"

            "You stole my phone number," Lucas said.

            "You're still on about that?"

            Lucas frowned. He watched as Will placidly sipped his cappuccino. Lucas had one waiting for him as well, and it smelled lovely and it awoke in him some terrible need for food, but he did not touch it.

            "Not only that," Lucas said, "but your company has made my home address available to all manner of criminals by its unprotected access on your database." This, he looked up. Spent many an hour the night before, after Artisyn left his small hovel, perusing the internet for a way to spook the whores away from him. The way Artisyn looked at him before leaving and her declaration – _I think I get how you are_ – left him with a dull ache in his stomach. After thinking on it, he realized immediately what was going on. The one star rating has made him some kind of target, some sought-after heirloom to who goes the most ambitious – or, perhaps, the most patient. But Lucas is not interested in being anyone's prize. He is alone for a reason. He looked at Will in that moment, himself placid-faced, and Will looking as if he'd been slapped and then his youthful face burst open with mirth.

            "Christ! Ah, that's funny! Where'd you get that from? Have you actually been watching TV?"

            "I'm serious."

            "You're _not_. No _criminal_ has access to your home address. Just me."

            "Then why did that whore–" He caught himself, lowering his steadily raising voice. He looked around the room, the patrons talking amongst each other. The coffee grinder working behind the counter, the machines, the acoustic music from the speakers. He looked back at Will's expectant expression. "Why did that whore come to my apartment last night?"

            Will squinted. " _What_ whore?"

            He said it with all the confidence in the world. Like saying, _What accountant?_

            Lucas spread his hands out. "The girl, Artisyn. The one from–"

            " _She_ was at your fucking house?" he cried, upsetting the table. Lucas hurried to catch his mug. "You _ordered_ her?"

            "Of course I didn't."

            "What was she doing there?" His voice was panicked, horrified. Lucas might well have been talking about a monster, from the way Will's face contorted in true terror, in worry. "Did you fuck her?"

            At this, some tables did turn to look. Lucas felt the burn of shame start low in his neck and rise to the broad planes of his cheeks.

            "No, I told her to get out."

            Will paused. Grinned. "Ha! That's funny! Was she mad? Did she look really pissed?"

            "Yes, of course." He paused. "Not unlike you."

            Will snorted and waved a hand. "All water under the bridge."

            "I know what you're doing. And it isn't going to work."

            "Oh yeah, Mr. Mickey, Mr. Lucas? What am I doing? You're suddenly so hip to whore dealings, why don't you clue me in?"

            Lucas clued him in, though under slight dubiety. His suspicions surrounding their sudden interest in his friendship. And as he spoke, he saw in Will no more of his casual indifference but disappointment and slight defeat. Though, only for an instant, which in turn worried Lucas.

            "Then, don't you see? You're going to fuck someone anyway, and you owe me, _so_ ," Will said, shrugging.

            Lucas nearly gaped.

            "Don't give _me_ that stupid look. You _ruined_ my reputation!"

            "I did no such thing – how can one review erase all the others?"

            "You just don't get it. I'm _new_. I've only been on staff for six months and Daddy..." Lucas phased out, just a bit. He continued to watch Will's mouth moving, his hands working, as he looked slightly upward into the air between them as if his story played on an unseen plane. The tale of his coming to Boston, pulled from the briny streets of Clearwater, Florida, excited and pink, fresh and new in Mason's stables. Lucas barely bought a word of it – it sounded like something a whore would say, make their sad life out to be wondrous and prosperous. Though Will has jeered at Lucas' apartment – _depressing, you live depressingly_ – Lucas thinks Will's own quarters are much the same if not worse. But what Lucas caught himself on was the timeframe. Six months. Six little months like chickadees on his shoulders, chirping at and jostling each other. How very strange. Six months ago, Lucas was a husband. Lucas was a father. Six months ago, Will was spreading himself for ruddy-faced tourists by barnacled docks. When Lucas came back to himself, Will was saying: "... and they say because of _that_ , it's important for the company to have a face. _My_ face." He paused, looking slightly confused. "Well, it's going to _be_ my face, once we fix my ratings. Artisyn, that smug cunt, is ahead of me and it's all because of you!"

            Lucas, coming in just at the end, frowned.

            "I don't make the rules, Lucas." He moved his empty mug out of the way, and leaned forward on his elbows, rising slightly from his chair. His face a few inches from Lucas', smiling under night-thick lashes. The sound of the chair legs raking against the hardwood. "It's not like I won't make it worth your time. You refused Artisyn, so you mustn't be _too_ into girls. Don't you wanna see why I'm so highly–"

            Lucas forced himself up from the table. Around him, the other patrons halted their quiet conversations and peered up at him.

            "Don't you understand?" he nearly shouted. "I'm not interested in you, or in her. I don't want anything to do with this."

            "Don't be such a fucking baby!"

            Lucas turned on his heel and went for the front door. When he looked back just briefly, bidden by the loud wail-groan that followed, he saw Will balling his fists on the table and slamming them down. He shouted _goddammit_ and _fuck_ and _I hope your dick falls off_ until Lucas left the stunned establishment behind.

            On the train, as it rolls into the Orient Heights station, Lucas looks once more at the young child who bawls. He shows no signs of stopping, despite his mother's calm voice, her smiling face. He will continue on until he's quite tired himself out, and when he stops he will not remember having cried so fiercely. It is the way of children. Lucas feels the phone in his pocket, feels it vibrate, and he disembarks.

 

*

 

"I'd like to ask your advice."

            Noah looks up, smiling. "Yeah? What is it, brother?"

            It is August 2nd, and grades are due for the summer interim. As such, the Rosalie Building is stuffed full of its tenants, those humble and ragged things that call themselves adjunct faculty. Lucas counts himself among them, though briefly, as he has finished his grading early. Lately his agitation and indifference has seeped from his head down his arm, into the ink of his pen. And into his fingertips which inputted the letters in the system. Three of his students who had been on the cusp – who, back in Denmark, he might have given the point or two they needed to make it – were failed and Lucas felt little in the way of guilt for it. Beside him on the desk, his phone vibrated insistently, as it had since he left the whore in the café.

            He looks at Noah now from the threshold of his office. Much like his own down the hall: sparse, dreary. The sun is out just beyond these walls but it might as well be midnight. Even the adjuncts who have not been kicked out of their families don't bother to place photos, knickknacks, furniture in their offices. They can be moved at any time, prodded deeper into the bowels of the building when once they thought they were at the deepest. Yet amidst this knowledge, Noah is smiling, bright-eyed. He beckons Lucas to him.

            Lucas shuts the door easily and sits in the chair before the small desk.

            "Do you know..." He looks at his phone in hand. His hand tingles from the constant vibrating. "Do you know how to block a phone number? I have seen some guides online. But they aren't very helpful."

            Noah looks at the phone, the blinking light. "You got some spam stuff going on?"

            "Not really."

            "Ah, angry ex?"

            Lucas looks away.

            Noah grins wider. "No problem. Here, let me give it–"

            Lucas grips it tightly, pulling away from Noah's outreached hand.

            "Uh, something wrong?"

            And he doesn't know what to say. He has never saved Will's name to his phone – never had any reason to, thinking this would all blow over quickly following their meeting with Mason Verger. Yet things have only worsened. And the things Will has been texting, everything from _ur pretty hot for an old guy u kno, i wouldnt even have to fake it i bet_ to _if u dont fuck me u asshole i will make ur life hell!_

            Noah blinks a half minute longer and then snorts, waving. "Okay, okay. I get it. Been sexting, huh?"

            "Pardon?"

            "Nothing to be ashamed of. I do it. Everyone does it." He shrugs, then leans in, lowering his voice. "You know, Lucas. I gotta say, I've never quite met anyone so embarrassed about being normal as you. Don't mind my prying, but are you Catholic by any chance?"

            "I."

            "Never mind. The point is this..." Noah pauses, and looks up. "Ah. Lost my train of thought there. Anyway. You hold on to your phone, I'll give you instructions. Got it?"

            "Got it." Lucas turns the phone back to himself.

            "Word to the wise, though. Empty out your photos every now and again. It's not a good idea to go around with a loaded gun."

            Lucas furrows his brows lightly. He nods.

 

*

 

He waits. Mostly for it to be a huge failure and for that familiar number to blast its way through Noah's barricade, with all the power and ire of Will himself. When it doesn't – when Lucas spends time with his phone in his apartment, the two of them like roommates after a tiff, and finds it deathly silent as before, he leaves his apartment in the early morning.

            He is _fearful_. He fears if Will cannot reach him – if, by whatever magic, he can tell Lucas is no longer reading the messages, he will be forced to make an appearance at Lucas' home. As Lucas sits in the train, in the sigh of a Saturday morning, he looks up at the dawn coming through the window. He slides lightly on the chrome seats, and looks at his phone. Across from him, behind empty seats, there is an advertisement looking at him, a man's face open in a smile, gaze off-cast over his shoulder. The ad is for his clothes, some sharp suit with a quadruple-digit price tag. Lucas takes his face in, exhales.

            The Thinking Cup is off limits, though Lucas is agreeable to its atmosphere. He secrets himself away in the back corner of a Panera not far from the Chinatown stop, and nurses a plain coffee for what seems like hours. He doesn't check the time. He stares down at his phone, at the Deep Sugar website.

            He isn't sure why he's here.

            Yet he is sure why he's here, in some roundabout way.

            He goes to Will's live-feed reviews, and sees that already his one star is beyond the field of vision. Customers – Mickeys – have been dutiful in their obligation for feedback. Lucas sips his coffee, and scrolls. And scrolls.

 

*

 

5/5 stars                                                                                                                      

            Let me start by saying this isn't just a whore – he's an experience. From the second he walked in, it was like my life had changed. Like for two hours, I wasn't me: dead-end job, two kids who barely know me, an ex-wife who loathes me, bills up to my eyeballs. This was a birthday present from my brother. I knew about it, but before he was scheduled to arrive I was nervous. Terrified really. Thought it'd be a big mistake but I've never been more wrong in my life. Everything just melted away when he touched me. He did this thing with his tongue and I saw Saturn. Brava, brava, encore. – J

 

5/5 stars                                                                                                                                  

            though the filly category gets a lot of attention, there's a rare gem to be found in the colts and that gem is Wondermint. it's hard to explain exactly what makes him so good – is it that he still has that youthful glow about him? is it that he can look pained? i am aware that it is all a look, all a facade, but it's acting, isn't it? and he's a damn good actor – bb

 

5/5 stars                                                                                                                                  

            I'm a fan! A great lad with talent out the wazoo. And those feet, precious. He'll make a good stallion one day. – N

 

5/5 stars                                                                                                                                  

            Unique whore with a bag of tricks all his own. He sets the atmosphere as he walks in, and is nothing if not professional. It's rare to see whores his age this practiced, or this concerned with how they're pleasing the customer. I actually called instead of using the online ordering system, to get a recommendation for the colts, and Wondermint was the first name on the receptionist's tongue. She was right! Definitely will be ordering again. A great agency overall. – R

 

*

 

From the top of Will's page, Lucas looks again at his highlighted name. He clicks again and sees something similar to what he read on Artisyn's card that is currently crumpled in his bathroom trash can: a Twitter. It says _Wonderm1nt_ and Lucas sips his long-cold coffee and clicks it. He is confronted with a bright blue page and a large photo up top of Will's bright green eyes, so close that it is all the camera can see save a few dark curls between them.

            Lucas blinks.

            Under the photograph is a description, which Lucas believes to be written by Will himself:

 

_career focused. professional whore. Daddy's boy. amateur photographer._

            Lucas is confused but continues onwards. The entire page seems to be in Greek. Little symbols everywhere, and Will seemingly conversing with others of his trade. Lucas can recognize one screen name which sounds like something Noah has said to him before. _Frivolit33_. Frivolitee. Their conversations are mostly done in little tongue-out and angry faces. There's another, named _Macul3t_ , who he also responds to. And Lucas scrolls and scrolls, the words in blue running over his glasses.

 

            Will Graham @Wonderm1nt – Aug 2

            thnx @Macul3t 4 cumming 2 Mickey #3 2nite – no colt i'd rather 3 w. :)))

            Will Graham @Wonderm1nt – Aug 2

            gotta luv the Mickeys who pamper u. its like they 4get whos the customer #notcomplaining

            Will Graham @Wonderm1nt – Aug 2

            reaaaally want gelato

            Will Graham @Wonderm1nt – Aug 1

            sumtimes i wonder why i have a car?? i could get to appts faster on foot at this rate #tweetingwhiledriving #yolo #ivegotinsurance

            Will Graham @Wonderm1nt – Aug 1

            night shift def has its perks     instagram.com/p/wuBHgphuGhG

 

            When he clicks it, he is launched from the Twitter site and into another: this filled from top to bottom with photos seemingly taken by Will. Lucas blinks widely, and, amidst the soft lighting in his corner, he hunches his shoulders and slides lower in the booth. The fabric of the booth against his jeans, his plaid shirt. His eyes have rings around them, as when he grades for hours.

            The picture linked is of Will's grinning face seated in his Mercedes. Pink and gold of sunset burning bright behind him, shrouding him in warmth. He has one hand on the steering wheel and is not paying the least bit of attention to the road.

            Amateur photographer – Lucas snorts at this. The pictures are strangely childlike; photos of a cat on Tremont, clouds which he thinks look like donkeys, him shirtless in bed, his feet while getting a pedicure, a sign that says DO NOT WALK ON THE TRACKS. One of them he can barely understand: just a photo of a cappuccino in his hands and thousands of these –

 

            #coffee #capucinno #caramel #happy #whoresdayoff #treatyoself #starbucks #caffienefix

 

            – which, if Lucas had to guess, he would say Will was hailing someone, or multiple someones, to come and comment on his picture. All of his normal commenters seem to be past Mickeys or possibly current ones, judging from the way that, even when confronted with a picture of a stray cat, they say only how gorgeous Will is, how entertaining, how talented.

            Though, Lucas supposes, there is no real need to be guessing. Surely this is nothing too advanced. He could find out about it if he wanted to. Young people are easy enough to understand. He cannot help, now, wondering if, thousands of miles from here, his own son will turn into this: someone obsessed with pictures of himself, and of showing himself off to strangers all across the world. If he would find happiness in smirking like this over his shoulder, into the camera. In telling others what he is doing every second of the day. In leaving soundbites of himself moaning where it is easily accessible. It is not impossible.

             Lucas is lost in thought and nearly drops the phone at the suddenness of its vibration. He looks down:

 

                        +1 (617) 525-0788

                                    found u

 

            Lucas rises from the booth immediately and with so much noise does he fall against it, unaware that his left leg had fallen asleep. His eyes are bleary from staring at the phone, and his neck is desecrated. He moves from the inner recesses of the building as patrons watch him go. Stepping onto the sidewalk out front, laced with pedestrians, he makes it to the curb before a familiar black car screeches to a halt in front of him. The window rolls down and Will's fervent green eyes peer out at Lucas.

            He says, "Found ya."

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brat.


	6. Free Time

"How did you find me? Tell me."

            Will grins, one hand on the six of the steering wheel, the other resting in his hair. They sit in the flooded post-work traffic. The sky is a pre-red orange, the sun somewhere behind sky-high buildings. Lucas sits in the passenger side, morose.

            "How could I _not_ find you?" Will asks. "God, you stick out like a sore thumb. I saw you in the window. All those kids in there talking and having, I dunno, _lives_. And then there was you in the corner looking like someone died." He cackles and the car lurches as the light turns green. "Yeesh. Relax. I'm not going to do anything to you – I'm not Artisyn."

            "She didn't do anything to me."

            "She _would_ have. You don't know her like I know her." He waves a hand in Lucas' direction. "She'll do anything to get what she wants."

            "Like stalking?" Lucas asks hotly.

            "Yeah, like–" Will blinks. Then smirks. " _Ah_. I get your point. But you're in safe hands. I oughtta be pissed off at you for blocking my number. How'd an old man like you ever figure that out? You Google it?"

            "Yes."

            "You damn techie." Will cackles again, which grates on Lucas' nerves. He seems to be in a good mood, and Lucas isn't sure that's a good thing for him. Either way. He notices as they drive that they are making a big square around the Common. The flags of Suffolk and Emerson wave lightly in the evening breeze. The windows are down and over them roll the street-heated scents of trash and sewer warmed by the day. At the corner of the street near another café, a homeless man sits amidst pages of the _Globe_. They are not going in the direction of the Sumner Tunnel.

            "Where are you taking me?"

            When Lucas looks over to Will, he cannot mistake the expression of surprise he wears. As if this was obvious. It is, also, in his tone. "My place," he says.

 

*

 

Years ago, when Lucas was still well-thought-of and his son was but a small curved fish in Kirsten's stomach, he – briefly – considered killing himself.

            Once, twice, just little flashes. Those intrusive thoughts like a pounding in his head, or a sweet serenade over his shoulder. Telling him that it would be the right thing to do, proper, in every sense of the word. He would save Kirsten later years of panic, of pain. He would save her that process women go through: blaming themselves for any misstep, any wrong turn. He knew her well, and knew those questions which she one day surely asked herself: _how could I not have known? what is wrong with me? what is wrong with him? did I do this to him?_

            And more than that, more important than womanly hysterics, would be the feelings of his son. The lost loneliness that might settle upon his shoulders and never fully lift, no matter what love he would one day come to know. No matter how many relationships he would build, nor how strong their pillars, they would have a foundation in silt. Lucas would stand just beyond the waterline, his statue like a sandy monolith on the boy's heart. And if the boy were to traverse his own waters and make it to the shore, he would find the statue disintegrated seconds before he could touch.

            Any of those knockings, those melodic whispers, dispersed upon the boy's birth. Lucas stood in scrubs, and held the yelling wet thing in his arms. He had gone into the maelstrom, mute.

                                                                       

*

 

He isn't sure what he expected. If he'd had to solidify it into a vision, he might look to his experiences of Brussels' whores when he was young and by his father's side. The dilapidated buildings that leaned against each other like drunken sisters sharing secrets. The stains on the outer walls, the rank odors wafting from within. Or perhaps – though this, he thinks only in the shabby corners of his mind – he would look to his own living quarters for a likening to how a whore might live. How Will might live.

            Whatever he expected, he watched silently as Will's Mercedes pulled in to the parking structure beneath Charm Ridge. As the sun abandoned the sky and night filtered over the building, that sky-spire which overlooks Boston Common like a queen would her own back garden, they ascended in a hollow gold elevator and came out on the seventh floor. Will twirled his key ring around his middle finger and hummed some pop song out-of-tune. He tossed his head from side to side, curls falling loose around his ears.

            And Lucas stands now on the small square of tile in the opening of the vast apartment. Will sashays in ahead of him, tossing his keys on a glass-topped end table nearby. The expansive layout is all peach-colored carpet and plush furniture. A sixty-inch flat screen before a coffee table and sectionals. Dim recessed lighting in the ceiling that, when Lucas stands beneath them, shade his hazel eyes to mocha. Further, and to the right of a window-bar that looks into the kitchen, is a wall of windows from ceiling to floor that look down on the city's valiant mimicry of starlight. Lucas rubs his sweaty palms against his jeans.

            "You coming in?" Will asks. He pulls at the back collar of his shirt, freeing himself of it, and walks into the hall to the left, out of view.

            Lucas takes one step forward, then one back. "Whose house is this?"

            From the unseen hallway: "The fuck do you mean, _whose_? I pay the bills, it's my house!"

            Lucas does not believe it for one moment. Perhaps this is a Mickey's. Perhaps Lucas has been deceived into joining him on an appointment. Stranger things have happened.

            When Will returns into the main area, he is clad in a simple white cotton shirt, and striped blue pajama pants. His squat square toes wiggle in the shag carpet. Lucas stares at him for a long moment and then says, "Why aren't you at work?"

            Will pauses, then laughs heartily as if Lucas has told a fine joke. He wags his finger over at Lucas and turns for the kitchen. "I've got a night off! Jesus. What's with you guys, thinking I've gotta be on someone's dick every night? Ever hear of a union?" There is a sound, like the refrigerator opening. Glasses bumping against each other. "Want a beer?"

            "No," Lucas says. Then: "Whores have a union?"

            Will reappears with two opened and frosty beers, one in each hand. Lucas has not seen the brand before. Will hands him one, forcefully, then hops onto the sectional and plants his heels on the coffee table before him. He wiggles his toes at Lucas who stands statue-still. "There's no _union_. You sure are easy to fool though. All foreigners are, it's not your fault. Sit down, sit down. And take your goddamn shoes off, were you raised in a barn? Do you watch TV? I've got like five hundred channels. I just got HBO."

            Lucas watches as Will snatches up one of the three remotes from beside his bare feet. Across the room, the television livens. And in its oncoming glow, as Will continually clicks through channels, Lucas feels as if he is in some strange dream. Like maybe he has fallen asleep in his cramped office in the Rosalie Building, still racing to get grades in on time. And Noah is two doors down from him, thinking of his next order from Deep Sugar. Lucas sits on the sectional, allowing for a distance of one cushion between him and Will. He takes a sip from the beer. It's not bad.

            He says, looking at the television, "Don't think I'm stupid because I'm foreign. I know what you're doing. You want to be my friend so you can have sex with me. So I will rate you properly."

            Will looks at him and shrugs. "Yep."

            "Why would I be your friend, knowing that?"

            Will sighs, and takes a large swig of his beer. He sets it with a wet clink to the coffee table. "Okay, if I've got to admit you're not dumb because you're a foreigner, then you've got to admit I'm not dumb because I'm a whore. What I'm offering is a symbiotic relationship. See that? I know stuff." He pulls his legs in, until he is bent at the knees, feet tucked under him. His eyelids lower. "I know lots of stuff. And things I don't know I can find out. It's a God-given talent. You said you aren't interested in me, so I thought that meant you were only into girls. But then you rejected Artisyn as well. You're into something, I've just got to figure it out. That's fun, right? Exploration. Let me see if I can find out what gets you hot. If I do, then I win."

            Lucas squints, his mouth moving into a frown. "Win what?"

            "Your dick, idiot, keep up." Will pushes a few curls from his eyes. "You fuck me and give me an honest rating. Look how nice I am. I'm not even demanding a five. I know that'll come naturally."

            Lucas takes a few more sips, and he rolls his eyes. As he looks ahead, the channel Will stopped on showcases rows and rows of cakes and confectionary. A man's voice, droning low, speaks on their farm-fresh ingredients, and lighter-than-air frostings. The sheen of ganache running down the side of one cake is near blinding. In his periphery, Lucas is aware of Will watching him. The way his head is propped up by one hand, his elbow against the back of the couch. His moss green eyes in the dim of the light overhead. He looks at Lucas like virgin land. Lucas sighs heavily.

            After a few long minutes of silence, where only the man on television speaks, Lucas sets his beer on the coffee table. He says, "Can I ask you something?"

            "Yeah?"

            "This place. It's really yours? And the car downstairs?"

            "Of course," Will says, smiling. Not one of those tawdry grins or smirks. A bright lilt of the lips. His eyes fire-lit. "All of it's mine. I worked hard for all this shit."

            "Then, if you make such a good living as is, why do you want to be used as a marketing product? How much more money is to be gained?"

            "It's not about money." He sticks a pinky in his ear and digs around idly. "It's about recognition. Pride. It's about being the best in my field."

                                                                       

*

 

The attempt that Lucas had tensed himself for never came. He foresaw it in every move from the whore: the flick of his gaze from the television to the window, the shift of his knees against each other, the bob of his throat as he finished his beer. In hindsight, Lucas feels terribly foolish for drinking something he hadn't seen opened. It could have been spiked for all he knew and yet the weight of the week was tangible on him, and he drank it without much caution. The whore made no move to seduce him, even when he said he had to catch the trains before they shut. Only this, at the door:

            Will stood leaned against the threshold and Lucas was just outside, standing in the lush hall of the building. The bright lights, the unstained carpet. He felt a jolt of déjà vu, in the event that it were reversed. The first night they met, Lucas standing in his door, watching Will go.

            "Pretty nice, huh?" he said. "If you wanted, you could come over more often. You'd be a lot less depressed over here than at your place, I bet."

            Lucas said, "I am not so sure that's true."

            Will snorted, smirking, and shut the door. Though Will took it to be some jest, Lucas was telling the truth. He lives depressingly, yes. So does Will. And Will must know it. Deep down, he must.

 

*

 

Days pass like shadows over the sea. Lucas is sure that there is no safe place for him. His hovel long since infiltrated. Even sleeping provides little respite from worry as his dreams are filled with shadow spirits who lay in his bed with him, wrapping him in a smoky embrace. When he wakes, he is dappled lightly with sweat and he looks at his blinking phone which is always lighted if it is after 3 AM.

                        Will

                                    u up?

            Instead of directly answering him, Lucas lies in the dark of his room, with his phone under the covers. He peruses Will's live feed reviews to see how he's done that night. Lucas has come to learn that not very many men review at all, though he knows not the percentage. Could it be that the whores are desperate for any kind of feedback? Lucas does not think it out of the realm of possibility; for, certainly, who would own up to such activity on a public forum? These men who leave reviews always with initials. And even that is bad enough. That one star, somewhere in the database of Deep Sugar though no longer visible to public eye, though it has no tie to Lucas – not even an L – he feels it like a brand. That and all the weight of that night. The place he was in, must have been in, to have done such a thing.

            He tries not to be so hard on himself – _you miss him, you miss your son is all_ – but it is impossible, in good conscience, not to be. Kirsten used to tell the boy stories, not so very long ago. Stories about monsters who roamed the countryside looking for little boys to snatch, to eat. Lucas remembers lingering just outside the door in the shadows, listening to her voice gaining momentum, and the young giggling that followed. She'd said, "But the little boy thought, 'Surely the monster will not eat me. I am different. I am his friend.' And so he went into the woods when his parents weren't looking. He stepped into the monster's domain, handing himself over like a little gift. Do you know what happened then?"

            "The little boy was eaten!"

            "Yes, øjesten. He was eaten. And as he went down the monster's gullet, he remembered what he thought before. About the monster loving him, not wanting to hurt him. What do you suppose the little boy thinks now?"

            "Ah," he sighed always, "it's not love."

                                                                       

*

 

It is the last day of the Farmers Market in Copley Square. The sun is out in mid-afternoon and the square is thronged with people and little stands that are covered with checked cloth awnings. Through the cloth, the sun warms the vegetables, the fruit, the jarred goods that lay in boxes of neatly arranged hay. In this small time between the summer and fall interim, Lucas thought he would feel something like a respite. Summer vacation for adults. Yet he does not feel that at all, and as he loiters near the John Copley statue's base, hiding in its sundial-like shade, he looks into the screen of his phone.

 

                        Will Graham @Wonderm1nt – Aug 6

                        official: need bigger closet. clamdigger obsession getting out of hand

                        Will Graham @Wonderm1nt – Aug 6

                        post wrk drinks w @Bli55  instagram.com/p/JLuHhpk

 

            Lucas clicks the link, and is jettisoned to Will's Instagram. It loads and Will and a woman Lucas does not know, with long black hair and a pale oval face, sit together in a darkened booth. Will holds a beer and the woman holds some concoction with fruit rinds sticking out like straws. In the half-dark, their grins are like shark teeth.

            "Ah, yeah. They're pretty photogenic, huh?"

            Lucas jolts, nearly dropping his phone. He whirls around to face Mason Verger who is smiling in what must seem to him a benevolent manner. The wind tosses his already hurricane-like hair. Lucas shoves his phone into his back pocket.

            "Hey, don't worry, I don't mind! You don't have to pay to look!" Mason laughs and tries to clasp Lucas on the shoulder. Lucas ducks it multiple times.

            He struggles before regaining his English, and it all comes out in a rush: "How did you know I was here?"

            Mason spreads his arms to invoke the space around them. Looks at the tall buildings, the stalls, the people, then back at Lucas. "It's a nice day. The Farmers Market and all. My favorite's the squash. I could make a whole day out of squeezing them to feel for ripeness." He cups his left hand claw-like and makes a grabbing motion at Lucas. "Something about getting it straight from the source, you know?"

            Lucas feels sweat pooling in his underarms, but does not rightly know why. He tries to exhale out any nervousness. "Mr. Verger–"

            "Oh no, please. Call me Daddy." He waves a hand. "Any friend of Wondermint's is a friend of mine."

            "I'm not his friend."

            "Ah, yeah? Sure about that? Listen, I'm not in charge of what he does in his free time. You know how whores are; wild, free-spirits. Couldn't reign 'em in if you wanted to. Nope." He shrugs greatly as if he has suffered their wild ways. "Still. All I ask is that you don't overtire him. Despite your one star, he's in high demand, and I don't want him being spread thin. You know?"

            Lucas has no idea what he's talking about. Yet he presses on: "I would like you to know your whores are stalking me. They know my home address. Not only Wondermint but the girl, Artisyn, as well."

            "Oh. That's too bad."

            " _That's too bad_?"

            Mason looks up at the sky. Then back at Lucas. "When did they come see you?"

            "I... I don't know. W-Wondermint has seen me many times throughout the days. And Artisyn, she came at night."

            "Ah. Well. I'm not sure what you want _me_ to do about that, Mickey."

            "You are their boss–"

            "Didn't you hear me say whores are hard to reign in? I'm just the guy in the carriage; they're the ones pulling the thing." He takes a step away from Lucas, hands in his pockets. "Nope. Sorry, bud. Hey, do me a favor though and use that coupon I sent you. It's got an expiration date, and I don't want it said that I'm not conciliatory. Ciao." He begins to stroll away, towards the edge of the plaza where there waits a lone black Rolls-Royce. He sends one flippant wave to Lucas and gets into the backseat and so quickly, smoothly, does the car drive away to merge with traffic. Lucas stands amidst the stalls and the fanfare in something like disbelief but not quite that defined.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who's your daddy? Is he rich like me?


	7. Pins / Needles

                        Will

                                    u going 2 cum over or what?

Me

Why would I do that?

                        Will

                                    my off night duh

                                    & b4 u start i already kno ur not busy

                                    u don't have a life

Me

I do have a life. I don't want to come over.

                        Will

                                    yea u do

                                    u luv my house

                                    my big screen tv

                                    u luv that beer i gave u

                                    most of all u luv my face admit it

                                    no1 would blame u u kno

                                    every1 does

                                    stop ignoring me

                                    ur reading every word im saying

                        Me

                                    What is it you want to do with me? Why do you want me to come over?

                        Will

                                    r u asking what we'd be doing if u were here???

                        Me

                                    Yes.

                        Will

                                    lol omg

                                    do u get y that's funny?

                                    don't answer of course u don't

                                    im kidding stupid answer me

                        Me

                                    What nights do you have off from work? Is there a schedule? Is it random? It seems random.

                        Will

                                    talkative 2nite. cum talk 2 me in person

                                    it'll b fun i swear

                                    if its not fun u have my permission 2 hit me ;)

                        Me

                                    I don't want to hit you.

                        Will

                                    sure u don't

                                    ur the rough type i can tell

                                    so am i picking u up?

                                    im waiting.......

                        Me

                                    When?

                        Will

                                    now. im outside

 

*

 

It's 10 PM and Lucas doesn't know why he's done this thing. He's riding into the heart of Boston in the Mercedes' leather coated passenger seat with the windows rolled down and the city lights blinding him, hitting the glare on his smudged glasses. The streets are hot and smell of the Korean food trucks they bypass. Loam black sky overhead. Though it could be daytime by how much light surrounds him. Six months and he still isn't used to the fervent florescence of the theatre district. When he squints, he thinks of fireflies back home, when they lit in his son's hair.

            "What're you thinking about?"

            Lucas blinks and turns back to the driver's seat. Will smells rich and deep, even over the scents of the street. Something a far cry from his springtime perfume. He wears all black and a silver watch on his wrist. His car stereo is pulsing neon in time with the bass, which he has turned down for Lucas' sake.

            "Nothing," Lucas says.

            "We already called truce," Will says, voice rising higher as a red Challenger roars by. While the noise causes Lucas to wince, Will's countenance brightens at it; his whole face lights up as if he is breathing in fresh air and not concrete staleness. "I can't think you're a stupid foreigner. You can't think I'm a stupid whore. I know you're thinking something."

            "I wonder why I let you talk me into this."

            "That's like an eighth." Will makes a rolling motion with his free hand. Turns the wheel with his other. "Gimme more, Lucas."

            "I wonder why you're asking me this."

            "We're playing a game, remember? I figure out what gets you off. I give it to you. The only kind of game Mickeys like to play."

            "I'm not your Mickey," Lucas says and the car rolls to a stop. Will has done an iffy job of parallel parking on a street side in front of a gaudy lit-up building, the word _Charity_ in pink across the top. Craning his neck, Lucas looks out of the window at the long line of buildings with awnings the colors of pink, blue, purple, radiating signs that look hot as stars. An even longer line of people in front of each door front, and though he might have recognized some of these in the daytime he cannot recognize them now. Under the sun, they might be his students. Under the moon, they are different creatures. Lucas' instinct is to bolt but he has nowhere to go and thus adjusts himself to autopilot as he follows Will.

            He has done this before. He has become quite good at it. For what Lucas is, for what he has always known himself to be, this has proven to be the core of his survival. Long before his son was a flicker of an idea. Long before he put a ring on Kirsten's finger. In order to get by, he learned quickly that he had to be capable in sex with women, with adults. Long before he wanted to die, he first wanted to live. Or one might call it surviving.

            It comes in waves: the recession of himself. First, he can feel his being fill up his body like water in a basin, touching the very edges and lapping gently there in calm tide. Then, slowly, the water comes down from the edges, relinquishing it in something nearing dignity. With poise and the understanding that high tide will return, when all is well again. Inch by inch does he go into himself and each bit of flesh that he no longer fills up begins to buzz like a foot gone numb. Pins and needles, pins and needles, until he is, all of him, in such a state. All but the very core, which is his heart. And in his heart is an ocean raging wild beneath a thunderhead all within the space of a fist-sized orb. In this space, he waits out whatever is happening to the rest of him. His body goes, the static knows what to do. He takes his knees to his chest, he takes his forehead to his forearms and balls up. He listens to himself, the constant thud of his heartbeat, the screaming of the sea.

            "Lucas? Lucas!"

            Lucas shocks back into himself, filling his extremities with his consciousness lightning-quick. He is sitting down. He is comforted by the soft leather of a couch adjacent to the glowing florescent dance floor. The entire building strobes with every movement of every present body. Next to him on the small couch is Will, who wears something between an expression of confusion and knowingness. The latter, upon coming back to himself, terrifies him, and so he tells himself it is certainly the former.

            "You okay?" Will is shouting over the drum of the bass not so unlike that in his car. He moves his mouth carefully to allow Lucas free-range of lip-reading. "You got this crazy look on your face!"

            "I do not," Lucas says, matching Will's tone and mouth-movements.

            Will waves a hand. He is on the same cushion as Lucas though there are two available. That quickly becomes false as two more people, enraptured in their own conversation, sit behind him. It isn't until just this moment, when Lucas looks again at Will, that he remembers this place. He saw it recently on Will's Instagram. Him, here, holding drinks with who could only be another whore. Lucas does not imagine Will having many friends outside of the practice.

            "What are we doing here?" Lucas asks, voice straining.

            Will seems to have no trouble hearing him. "If I took you to my place again, you'd just think I'm trying to fuck you. So here we are."

            "You _are_ trying to do that."

            "You're not ready yet." He wiggles his wrist and grins. He looks at the silver watch there. "Tick tock!"

            Lucas feels himself simmering. The noise, the glaring lights, the thud of the bass that he can feel even in his heart is irritating him. He says, "Do you come here often?"

            Will blinks and snorts laughter. "God, you're funny for an old man!"

            Lucas furrows his brow.

            "Look," Will says and leans in closer. He puts an arm around Lucas' shoulders which Lucas immediately attempts to shake off. He finds Will's grip is not so weak. Will directs his view across the throbbing dance floor to see throngs of people huddled close together on the other side. A man is staring at them; he is tall and broad-shouldered, thick in the middle. He looks as out of place here as Lucas feels. "See that guy? The one staring?" Will's voice a yell in his ear. "He's one of my regular Mickeys. He's my Wednesday at midnight."

            "What is he doing here?"

            "He knows I come here. A lot of the whores from DS do." Will eases back a bit, smirking. "He likes to watch me. He likes to see me in my 'natural habitat'," Will says, clawing his pointer and middle fingers.

            "Your natural habitat?"

            "My free time. When I'm off work. Thinks I must act different or something, when I'm not on his dick." He scratches fervently at his ear. "Truth is, I think I'm pretty much the same all the time."

            From the way he talks on his Twitter, he is pretty much the same. Though this Lucas does not say.

            "Wanna know what we do?"

            "What?"

            "That Mickey – want to know what he has me do?"

            Lucas frowns. "Of course not!"

            "Well." That smirk again. Leaning in again. This time with a slight arch in his back, and his right knee touching lightly Lucas' left. "He likes intimacy, see. He likes to think we're being– _real_." Will rolls his eyes lightly. "What he really wants I can't give him – against company policy, you know. Skin on skin."

            "Skin on skin?"

            Will touches the material of Lucas' shirt. The shoulder pleat. "You know. Raw. Bareback. Without a condom."

            "Oh."

            "I say I love him. I say he's all that matters to me." Will pauses. "I spit in his mouth."

            Lucas can somehow feel his frown intensify.

            Will claps his hands over his mouth and laughs. "Are you such a prude? Does that disgust you? It's what kissing _is_ anyway. Essentially. And who am I to begrudge a customer? Mickey wants what Mickey wants."

            Looking over at the man, Lucas cannot read his expression. His eyes are dark, that's all. He looks at them over the rim of his drink, as if they are television. Lucas says, "He must know it is farce. He's paying."

            "Of course he knows! But he doesn't know."

            "What?"

            "He knows," Will says, pointing to his own temple. Then his points to his own groin. "He doesn't."

            Lucas rolls his eyes.

            "You get it? In the moment, there's nothing else," Will calls as the room seemingly grows louder.

            "There is so much else," Lucas says.

 

*

 

He doesn't remember what time they leave the club. It's sometime after midnight when Lucas has refused Will's offer for a drink more times than he cares to count. When he exits the building, his head is pounding. In the Mercedes again, before Will can turn on his stereo, Lucas touches his hand and stops him.

            "Please," he says, holding his head with his free hand.

            Slowly, Will retracts. In the blinding lights surrounding them, his face is almost blotted out by it. He takes both hands to the steering wheel. "C'mon. I want to show you something."

            "I want to go home," Lucas protests.

            "Stop bitching."

 

*

 

At this time of night, at what could be called morning, Boston seems asleep. The streets near the Bowdoin station are nearly desolate, and few places save a lone bar stand open. Down the street, further than the low sway of trees in the small park, are fast food places that look like they haven't been operational in ages. Though Lucas knows they closed only hours ago. The sky is so so black.

            "Here," Will says. They parked his Mercedes off the side of the street and left it behind. They jog across a wind-blown crosswalk to the other side where iron gates surround an old church. Across, over the loft of a yoga studio and beside a 20-foot ad for Griddler's, stands another equally sized billboard space that is white with emptiness. Will waves a hand wildly at it. "That's the first one. Daddy just bought it."

            Lucas rubs at his eyes tiredly. "Bought it for what?"

            "I told you! Before. He's going to do mainstream marketing. He's going to buy concrete ad space all over the city. The T, park benches, you name it." The breeze picks up and Will's curls cross his face, touch at the corner of his jaw. "When I first came here, Daddy told me he'd be doing this one day. He said, 'People think it's not normal. That there's something wrong with it. But those are the same people ordering you.' To be able to have my job viewed as normal, everyday... man." Will quirks one eyebrow and turns, suddenly, to look at Lucas. A taxi moseys past and in its headlights, Will's face glows. That smile. "To be the face of that. That'd be incredible."

            For a second, Lucas is not sure what to say. He finally gathers himself. "You want this? You want to continue your life in this way?"

            "Of course I do."

            They walk back to the car. Will walks as if he is in the middle of his day and Lucas supposes he is. But Lucas is hunchbacked and dragging. He has been up for hours. And he is not beleaguered simply with loud music and long waking hours but too the thought of this poor strange boy locked in an endeavor like this. _Of course I do._ Lucas wonders who talked him into it. Who did something to him a long time ago to make him think this is normal, natural, an ambition of all things. By the time Will drops Lucas off again at the foot of his building, by the time he is in bed again and milliseconds from sleeping, Lucas already has the beginnings of it in his mind: Will is but a child and children do not know what is good for them.

 

*

 

Lucas doesn't wake until 1 PM and when he does, he swears he can still feel the bass from the club music – Will's voice: _dubstep, you idiot, not club music_ – still resounding in his bones. His mouth is dry and his head is heavy though he had nothing to drink. Upon opening his eyes, he reaches haphazardly over towards the nightstand, knocking around his glasses in the process. He retrieves his phone.

            Turning on his side and burrowing again under the covers, he checks the text messages that were sent long after Lucas fell to bed, back when Will must've arrived home again.

 

                        Will

                                    u kno usually going 2 clubs makes guys wanna fuck

                                    but u just wanted 2 go home & sleep

                                    how old r u???

 

            Lucas sighs and doesn't bother responding to this. And even if he did, he wouldn't get a quick response. Will is sleeping now, gathering rest for his night of work ahead. It is Saturday, and the man who Lucas saw in the club will not be on Will's roster tonight. But it hardly matters. In some such way, Lucas is sure all of his clients have a similar air about them. The darkness in their eyes hailed by simple loneliness. Yes, Will said that. Mickeys are lonely.

            For perhaps an hour, Lucas ignores his body's urging to go to the bathroom. He stays beneath covers and flicks through Will's Instagram as he has of late been wont to do. He finds it strangely wondrous. Spelunking in a temporal sea cave. Four weeks ago, six weeks ago, six weeks and an hour. Will pulling a face in an aisle of the grocery store, Will under a willow tree. Will snapping pictures of a fat man with stained shorts and Will taking shots of bits of the orange sky broached by a red sun. At some point when Lucas is seven weeks deep, he sees Will's bright green eyes above a similarly colored ice cream cone. He has it all over his lips and chin, his tongue out and lapping at it in what is clearly meant to be sexual but looks wholly ridiculous.

            Yet, Lucas remembers his son's favorite flavor. Mint chocolate chip. He remembers the boy begging for it even in the dead of winter, and Kirsten soundly refusing him. Lucas could hear it through the thin wooden walls of their home. Her _tut tut_ and sending him away and his large, elongated groan. Then: like a sudden halt of an orchestra, there was the cut-off of the groan as if at that very second the boy realized there was another option.

            Lucas listened carefully from his study upstairs. Kirsten's methodical footsteps: slowish and soft, padded by her plush house shoes. They grew further away. And closer were tinier footsteps, quick and bare against the lacquered floors and the staircase, the fourth one that always creaked even under just eighty pounds of weight. Lucas remembers turning in his chair from his desk just in time to see that brown hair and pale face peer in around the jamb. The tiny fingertips that held steady there. From behind Lucas, the mid-afternoon sun streamed in through the blinds, illuminating that young face in stripes. Dust motes floating before him, infinitesimal galaxies between them.

            The boy looked at him for a long moment. Then, slowly, his face broke out in a grin. Lucas could not help but smile, and he counted himself lucky. Yes, Kirsten had her bedtime stories, her mother's love, her rituals with the boy that started at the time of his conception. But Lucas had built his own ties, which were forged with hard work and understanding and trying. And wasn't – isn't – a tie built upon work rather than amniotic fluid much more sustainable? Can it not sustain an ocean apart? Can it not sustain lurid tenderness and succoring darkness? Can it not?

            When the ice cream was smeared across the boy's mouth, when he was giggling at how they had fooled his mother, Lucas stilled and felt in the atmosphere their isolation. He leaned in and cleaned the boy's mouth with his own.

            His phone begins vibrating aggressively and Lucas' eyes are wet. He wipes them against his bare shoulder and exits from the Instagram window. He expects a text from Will, perhaps awoken suddenly. He does not expect this new number with a familiarity about the words:

 

                        +1 (617) 203-1108

                                    Mr. Mickey, do you know? Do you know what a foal is? Meet with me. – A

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you know?


	8. Subject: NoSubject

He cannot liken the sensation to anything else and that's what makes it so terrifying. It is somewhere between standing on millimeter-thin ice just as the spring melt is setting in and losing a large, but yet uncertain, amount of money. Lucas lies in bed with the phone in his sweaty grip and he feels caught between these things as he re-reads the words through memory.

            _Do you know? Do you know what a foal is?_

            Lucas has some idea.

            He thinks maybe he can ignore this. The way he sometimes – oftentimes – ignores Will's wild texting sprees. Though now he knows that one can tell he's read the text. As of right now, he feels as if he is on borrowed time. Every second that goes by is like a small stone thrown at him. His body in a constant state of jitters as he waits for another inevitable vibration. Finally, his body rejects the sensation so whole-heartedly that he sets the phone on the night stand and launches himself from the bed. The lateness of the day combined with the text from Artisyn have him in a tizzy and he can barely pilot his body. He spends a long twenty minutes in a cold shower.

            The dirty carpet against his clean feet as he stalks out of the bathroom. He has a towel around his waist then pulls it to dry his dripping hair. It's the only clean towel he has at the moment. Unable to wash the sensation away, Lucas goes to his phone again and stares at the message. He can imagine her: with her dark hair and red-painted fingernails, looming over her screen. Knowing he has seen this and, so differently from Will, sitting and waiting.

            Quick, then. That's best. Like a bandage. He sends the text, and goes to dress.

 

*

 

It's too fast for her to have been in any other part of the city. Between the time Lucas sent the text and Artisyn's knocking on the door, perhaps seven minutes went by. Perhaps less. Lucas fastens the last few buttons on his plaid shirt and adjusts his glasses. For the sake of safety, he peers through the peephole. As he opens the door for her, he is slightly aware that every time he does this, have a whore enter his home, he is in some way courting trouble. He is aware that he could have simply not answered the door when Will first came crying outrage. Every choice he has made since that moment seems to be leading him further downward into some trench that has not yet been conquered, or named.

            "Mr. Mickey," she says when the door is shut behind her. She wears her hair loose and down; a simple blue dress adorns her. Her eyes are less bright than before, slightly ringed dark. Lucas remembers she should be sleeping about now.

            "You look tired," Lucas says.

            Artisyn's roselike mouth thins to an unamused line. "Yeah, well. You're cutting into my eight hours, so."

            "I'm cutting in? If I recall, I did not message you first."

            "Well, I had to!" Her voice goes into a higher register. As she looks at him, with such a stern expression, nearly pressing her fists to her hips, Lucas sees her likeness to Will once again. She goes back to the bed and sits at the corner. "You're a tattletale, Mr. Mickey. That's not very kind."

            "Tattletale?"

            "You told Daddy that I came and talked to you on company time. Then he– he–" She searches for the word, her shoulders rising with helplessness. They drop and she exhales a groan. "He scolded me!"

            Lucas looks at her. She does not seem to take much notice of him, so lost is she in her rememberings. She glances at her small hands on her pale thighs, frowns, then looks up at Lucas. "I know who you are," she says.

            Lucas holds himself steady. "What does that mean?"

            "I know what kind of guy you are." She raises a hand and waggles a forefinger. "Divorced, that was easy enough to see." She motions at the small apartment. "I mean, everything about you screams exile. But I was thinking about why you haven't fucked me or Wondermint yet, and... of course, you didn't want a stallion or mare. If you did, you'd have ordered them already with Daddy's coupon."

            Lucas says nothing, though she pauses for him to respond.

            She shrugs. "So it stands to reason you'd want a foal. That's the only thing you could've confused a colt with."

            Slowly, Lucas shakes his head. "You do not know what you're talking about."

            "You didn't answer my question. Do you know what a foal is?"

            "I have an idea."

            "It's a kid. A kid whore. Listen, they're available in certain places but Deep Sugar is above-board, we wouldn't have any–"

            "I do not want that."

            "–and even if we did have them, they'd be too expensive for you," she says, bouncing one leg over the other. She cranes her neck back and looks at the other wall, where the window is shut. The length of her throat is bared to Lucas, and it descends into the hollow of her collarbone. As she breathes, the tops of her breasts swell and recede. Like the ocean. Suddenly, she curls forward, straightening, the rush of blood in her head turning her the flushing color of a red delicious apple. "Where are you from, Mr. Mickey?"

            "Denmark," he says.

            "In Europe, they have lots of foals. They're a dime a dozen, really..." Her voice blurs out and the ocean swims into its place, in Lucas' ears. That constant drumming sound, that faraway din. And Lucas watches her mouth move and watches the tide rolling out of it. He imagines his son, who will be twelve come wintertime, being drafted into an agency like this. His soft brown hair in someone's grasp, his freckles scrunched upon his nose as he winces. Lucas has imagined this many times, but the daydreamed hand has always been _his_ and in the face of the child's wince, Lucas had always thought to be there, whispering, _It's all right. Don't cry. Don't worry._

_I've got you._

            "I'm not like that," Lucas says, a croak so minute that Artisyn continues on in her prattling about the logistics of having a foal category in America. His breathing is hard in his chest, and his fists clench at his sides. Louder: "I'm not like that!"

            Artisyn only stops when Lucas is upon her, knees on either side of her hips, one strong hand at her throat. She is down against the mattress which is coated in sweat and skin cells from all the nights Lucas has been alone. Exiled. Lucas feels her pulse at his palm, and she lies motionless beneath him, looking up into his eyes with dull stars in her own.

            "You don't understand," she says with great labor. "I'm not judging you." He squeezes just the tiniest bit more and she jolts, her fingernails gripping into the sheets beneath. She still puts up no resistance. "I'm a profession– a professional. Mickey wants what Mickey wants," she insists, and struggles to cough. She is turning pink, and red.

            Lucas inhales quickly and sits back, nearly falling from the bed. He scrambles back on hands and knees until his head hits the door to the apartment. In the silence of the room, Artisyn hacks and pants heavily and Lucas swallows continuously, looking at his own quivering hand. He can still feel the warmth of her and he realizes, so suddenly, that was the longest he has had physical contact with someone since he arrived here. He looks up from his hand as she moves again to sit, one strap of her dress falling down a curved shoulder. Hair in strands across her face. When she is righted again, her lips are wet and parted.

            Lucas says, softly, "What do you want from me?"

            "What you won't give," she says. "I'm not Wondermint. You've spent time with him, haven't you? He is a fool. He'll keep going, recklessly, not knowing he can't win."

            Lucas adjusts his glasses. They are littered with smudges.

            She continues: "I know you want out of this, Mr. Mickey. I can become the face of the company on my own merit. It's not that big a deal for me. But Wondermint can't do it alone."

            "What does that mean for me?"

            "Free yourself, Mr. Mickey. Tell him what you are. He won't be able to give it, and he'll leave you alone. Daddy will simply see he's stopped trying and he'll give the campaign to me."

            Lucas looks at her. He says nothing.

            She rises from the bed. At her approach, Lucas uses the door behind him to rise to his feet. He stands before her, her ruffled countenance. Yet Lucas looks as if he is the one who has been attacked. He is aware he has such a gift. To look like the victim. If nothing else, he has always had that.

            He thinks perhaps he should apologize but cannot find it in himself to do so. Instead, he steps out of her way. Her fingertips light on the doorknob, she looks over her shoulder at him.

            "Daddy doesn't employ foals or anyone who used to be a foal. He says they can never be real professionals. Many other agency owners share his opinion." She shakes her head. "You won't find what you're looking for here, Mr. Mickey. You should go back home."

            Quietly, she leaves. Lucas can hear her heels click down the hall until she hits the stairwell.

 

*

 

A one-off has damaged his sleep schedule. The night prior at the club, out until all hours, something in him refutes and desires sleep at once. Lucas tries to sleep just after Artisyn leaves and he cannot. He curls on his side in bed but it smells like her, like pears and cherry blossoms. Some shampoo that no doubt costs more than Lucas' electric bill. And he cannot stand his bed for a long while anyway. He cannot stand the vision he has in his head of his hand around her throat, her nails in his sheets.

            _Mickey wants what Mickey wants._

            Yes, Will has said that as well. It is only natural to wonder, then, how much is too much? Where is the line in the sand and how does a Mickey know when it is crossed? How does a whore know when what the Mickey wants is dangerous? Or unsafe? Or unjust?

            Lucas leaves the apartment. The walls feel close to closing in on him, and he cannot escape the likeness of an echo chamber wherein Artisyn's words reverberate, insisting in a calm and even tone that she knows who he is. Where Lucas expects to feel unrestrained out in the early evening, the sky moving to burnt orange, he is encased in the sensation of eyes on him, eyes all around him. Their gaze tangible and ethereal. When his broken brown shoes hit Bennington Street pavement, skirting over drunkenly wavering cracks, he has his hands deep in his jean pockets and looks around over the tops of his glasses. Women and men litter the sidewalks, linking hands or with the tether of a dog's leash. Children intoxicated with the last vibrant plumes of summer traverse the streets on their bikes, ignorant of Lucas as they pass him by. The heightened pierce of their happy cries, the stuttering gasp as one young boy falls from his bike and skins his knee. Lucas can see from across the street: the bloody gash against his brown skin. The way his stubby fingertips prod it. His friends gathering round.

            Across from Blue Winery Apartments, long down the street and past a bus stop, is an overarching metal bridge which lands into the hot sands of Constitution Beach. Lucas travels it, opposite a woman and a collie. The collie nudges his hand as they pass each other and it pulls lightly at its leash to get to him. The woman smiles and mutters an apology.

            Lucas thinks, _A dog cannot tell what I am. How can a simple whore?_

            When his shoes hit the sands, the sun has dipped fully below the horizon and the sky looks confused – pulled between night and day. The wind blows high over Boston Harbor and kicks up the sands. As night sighs down around him, Lucas finds the beach nigh deserted. A deep blue washes over the sands and spotty bits of grass on which blankets have lain. The water looks black, and the lights from Logan Airport stand fervently in place of any starlight. Lucas walks until he reaches one of the benches just off the sand, which is beside a lamppost.

            Alone. He finally feels alone. He adjusts himself near the black metal armrest and pulls out his cell phone. He means to go to Will's Instagram, to let his mind wander and float like a dead thing on the water. But before he even opens the page, it begins to vibrate. It is Will. Lucas looks briefly at the time before he sees to the message. 8:34 PM – he should be working.

            When Lucas opens the message, he must wait for a picture to load. Then it does.

            Immediately, Lucas looks back over his shoulders, quickly turning his head from side to side. Stray locks of his ashen brown hair touch his ears, then resettle. Lucas is alone. From far away, he can hear the same happy cries of children, and the tick-tick-tick of obstructed bicycle spokes. They are over the bridge. Swallowing, hugging the phone in slightly, he looks at the screen again. At first glance, he was sure it was some jest; Will sending him a picture of a woman to make him blush. Who knows the mind of a whore? Yet upon further inspection, it is not a woman. It is Will.

            In the lamplight, Lucas sees: a silhouette. It's dark in the room, but enveloped softly with some dim lighting from beyond the sight of the camera. The picture is clear though purposefully obscured. Will's shape is overtly a man's, but so strangely soft near the hips that the pink panties he wears slightly cut into his flesh. One of his thumbs hooked into the band which is white lace. He wears nothing else, and holds one hip cocked, shaping him in a subtle, sure S. His face is hidden behind curls that are defined fully, perhaps rolled by curlers or a device. And one green eye peering at the camera, at whoever is holding the camera, and also at Lucas.

            The phone vibrates again. The picture's cousin: Will just seconds later from the first picture, a step closer. Another: Will a second later with both thumbs hooked into the band and pulling down. Again: Will half a foot from the camera, from sternum to mid-thigh all Lucas can see – and his hands pushing the panties down his hips to hold just at the start of dark pubic hair.

 

                        Me

                                    That's enough.

 

            Lucas expects Will to reply smartly, or not say anything at all in lieu of another picture. He waits and receives neither. The wind continues over the water and beach and Lucas closes the texts, then opens them, then closes them again. Then opens them. He examines the pictures the best he can while placing his pointer and middle fingers in front of Will's body to shield himself from it. He squints around Will to see the background, that which looks like someone's bedroom. There is a queen-size bed soft with blankets and overstuffed pillows beneath an ornate wooden headboard. Around one post are handcuffs. So he is working.

            Slowly, Lucas takes away his fingers. And he looks at Will.

 

*

 

Six years after the birth of a bond that would last Lucas' lifetime, Lucas' whole being experienced a jolt not unlike lightning striking – just as lethal and just as rare. He heard scampering downstairs against the floorboards and paid only the smallest of attentions as he brooded over papers upstairs in his study. It was wintertime and frigid; the window next to his desk laced with hoarfrost and the world white beyond it.

            Kirsten's voice: "You come back here! You scamp!"

            And a high string of giggling following. The door to Lucas' study half-shut and suddenly bursting open, allowing in not only the dog with her excited yapping but the boy, thin-limbed and nearly naked. Lucas looked up from his desk, his cage of books around him. The boy was on all fours in the center of the room like a wild animal, with nothing but the brown hair in his eyes and a pair of periwinkle blue panties on his impossibly small hips. Lucas recognized them immediately from Kirsten's topmost drawer in their bedroom. They were embroidered with the word _yours_ across the front, a special pair for special times. Lucas was caught there, immobilized in his chair, in his bulky plaid shirt and jeans, his thermal socks. For seconds, the room grew even colder. He could see his own breath.

            The dog pushed her wet nose onto the boy's birdlike chest, his neck, pinned him to the bare floor. The panties slipped down his hips, a jumble where they were tight on Kirsten.

            Lucas said, "Aren't you cold?"

            "Ha–" The boy released a cold puff of air. He opened his eyes, his thin arms wrapped around the dog's neck. His bones, elbows and heels and shoulder blades, against the wooden floor. "It feels good." And he looked at Lucas. He looked at Lucas with such a focus, and said those words with such a sigh that Lucas thought his own heart might implode. He could feel himself wanting to cry.

            _I made this? I made this?_

            Lucas might have gotten on his knees to push the dog out of the way. Lucas might have gotten on his knees to worship the boy in any way he knew how. But the door opened wider and Kirsten moved into the room, destroying the crystalline air that had formed. She scooped her son up in her arms like a ragdoll and his head lolled back over her elbow and his giggles burst forth anew.

            She rubbed her face into his neck as the dog had. "Silly boy! How did you get to be so silly?" She looked up over the sacrament she held and smiled at Lucas. "You must've gotten it from your papa."

 

*

 

Lucas walks in the moonlight away from Constitution Beach. He hits the pavement once more on the other side of the bridge and is presented with Bennington Street in full bloom of night: the bus stop across the street littered with trash, a man lingering near the crosswalk on his phone, the Burger King adjacent all lit up in neon.  As Lucas stands at the crosswalk too, he feels his phone vibrating and notes the electronic jingle of music that accompanies it. He looks to see it is Will calling. He answers without much thought.

            "What are you doing?"

            Will is laughing. The sound grating and boisterous in Lucas' ear, such that he thinks the man next to him can also hear it. There is also the rush of wind and cars on the other side of the line. Will is outside. "God, you're really weird!"

            " _I_ am weird?"

            "Did you like what you saw?"

            "No."

            "I got my Mickey to take the pictures with my phone and send 'em to you. On the condition that he could send them to himself as well. Pretty nice, huh? They'll be part of the campaign when I start."

            Lucas frowns. The light changes and he follows the other man who is walking across the street. Lowers his voice: "Will, you have to stop this. I am not going to help you with this marketing."

            "Listen, I'm between appointments, I gotta go–"

            "Fine, go."

            "–but before I do," Will says, and his voice changes. Settles down into a lower octave. "I wanted to tell you that _that_ particular Mickey likes to tie me up. Different ways. But almost always to the point where I can't move. Sometimes it does get a little– out of hand. I get little welts on my wrists and ankles. He likes me on my knees, wide open, bent where he has the most access. Completely deep. Where he's getting nothing but me. I feel like out of all my regulars, out of all the ways they take me, that's probably how you'd like it best. You seem like that type. Like you need to be as far in as you can go and it doesn't matter to you if I'm screaming my fucking head off. You might not even hear it. It'd start to fade out, and I'm all you've got, but I'm not all you've got. You've got yourself and your secrets, and that's fine with me. Keep your secrets. But I can help you go to that place. Where you know where you are but you don't, where you're lost and found. Where you're so deep you never quite come back out again. I could be your dreamscape. You could stay there. You could live there. If you wanted."

            Lucas hasn't realized it, but he's stopped walking a long time ago. Will makes a self-satisfied sound and tells Lucas that he's an old man and to go to bed early. Then he hangs up. When Lucas takes the phone from his ear, it is pockmarked with sweat and Lucas is on an unfamiliar street. 

 

           

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts appreciated!


	9. The Void

It's been a while since he's done this. He isn't sure where to start. Thus, he starts in the void.

            Eyes closed: the black that encases him is like too much gravity. Lucas lies face-down in the tired old bed of his small apartment. The curtains are closed, yet he can feel one long thin beam of moonlight across his naked back. And the sheets against his arms, tangled around his sturdy legs. His boxers pushed down to reveal half his pale backside, his hand shoved into the front of them. He swallows over a lump in his throat. His own hand feels strangely unwanted, and the smoothness of his blood-flushed skin is even worse. For a second, he almost remembers himself and stops. But then he forgets again, and allows himself to do what Will said he could do for him. His own secrets.

            Still, lost to himself as he is, moving in a slow rhythm into the sweaty palm of his hand, he cannot go to that place he has gone to before. In America, he is exiled, and exiled from all things. That one specific fantasy is a motherland best forgotten. Lucas' breath quickens, his pink lips part against the rough cotton of the pillow case. He wets them, and shuts his eyes tight. 

            Lucas' other arm is angled up under the pillow beneath his head. He feels the coolness of the sheets untouched there, a balance to the heavy heat in his right hand. Slowly, he rolls his hips downward. It is a rusted motion, tripped up with forgetfulness. Lucas turns his head fully into the pillow, pressing his face there. He twists his wrist a bit, and remembers what he responds to best, or what he used to respond to. Outside, the night is filled with the far-off rolling of cars on the street, an ambulance siren. Lucas' body grows hot with the beginnings of sweat and yet no matter how long he strokes himself, no matter how he angles his body, he cannot spread himself into that place he has belonged to.

            The void continues to be the void, with no real salvation inside it. No color, or voices. No hope, no safety, not for him. Memory socks him in the gut and Lucas' hand flies away from his groin. He rakes it back through his lank hair, over his naked face. Pulling his boxers back up, he curls into a ball and yanks the sheets over him. As he tries to lull himself to sleep, he tells himself he has to be good. Before he falls asleep, he isn't sure what good means. The concept is as elusive as water.

 

*

 

"How far ahead did you plan this?" Lucas asks.

            Will is grinning across the table. In the candlelight, he looks slightly older. Maybe a few years. He is dressed in all black but for his dark blue jeans, and there is a gold stud in his left ear which Lucas had never known was pierced. His curls shine with some product and in the hushed conversation of other tables surrounding theirs, Will seems to make an effort not to cackle loudly as he is known to do. He waves a hand, motioning to the dimly lit bistro at large: "Not very far. I name-dropped Daddy and got in spur of the moment."

            "Won't he be angry?"

            Will flips a curl out of his eyes. "Daddy doesn't _get_ angry. And certainly not at me. He just, uh..."

            Lucas glances down at the flatware. "Scolds?"

            "Right, right! Scolding, totally. Man, but does his name open up a lot of doors." Will takes a thin, crisp breadstick and it disappears quickly into his mouth like a log into a wood chipper. He takes another one and stuffs that in, too. He speaks with a full mouth: "I mean, as many people as I know, I couldn't get in here on my name alone. Or it'd've taken me fucking weeks. Maybe months. What do you think it'd be like to be able to just get _instant recognition_ like that? On the back of something you built yourself?"        

            Lucas has been ignoring the breadsticks since they arrived. He hasn't eaten since morning, and he feels hollowed out, but there is a difference between a young man stuffing his face with obviously no manners and an old man who would only look to be dying of hunger if he partook in appetizers. Lucas won't give in. So he waits for their entree orders to arrive and he sips his water. Will is gulping red wine.

            "I'm sure I don't know," Lucas says, eyeing the varnished floors beneath his shoes. "I'm sure neither of us will ever know."

            "Pft! God, you're gloomy. Maybe _you_ have no ambition. But I'm not like you."

            Lucas grunts.

            Will licks the tip of another breadstick thoughtfully. "When I'm a great whore, recognized all over the city, you'll see. I'll be able to get into places like Amandine on my own." When he grins this time, there are crumbs in his teeth. Lucas looks away, pressing the heel of his hand into his stomach to keep the sound from rumbling haphazardly.

            In the next few minutes he is given some semblance of reprieve. Will has ordered some dish with lobster tail heaped on top of a New York strip. Something about herbed butter and truffle frites. Lucas ordered simple stuffed mushrooms. Lucas is mostly quiet while he eats. Will is nothing if not boisterous and ill-mannered; at one point a speck of food from his mouth flies into Lucas' shirt pocket. The waitress returns often. She is overly polite and smiles at Lucas. Nearing the end of the meal, as she leaves once more after delivering their cold and fanciful desserts, Will leans in the tiniest bit.

            "You know what she thinks, right?"

            Lucas sucks sorbet from his bottom lip. "Mm?"

            "She thinks you're Daddy. She thinks we're doing some kind of, I dunno, business meeting." Will grins at Lucas' subsequent frown and he returns to eating, adding, "Or, you know, that you're renting me out for the night."

            Slowly, Lucas looks up. "Renting you out?"

            Will is licking at the back of his spoon. He admires himself in the clean reflection. "Yeah, you know. Like, uh, taking me for a test run. He does that sometimes." Will wiggles his eyebrows at himself. "He says it's for the sake of upkeep. Keep us on our toes for customers. Making sure we know the rules. But we all know it's like putting your hand in the cookie jar." He shrugs. "It's whatever. He owns the fucking jar."

            "And you... you do things with him? Whatever he asks?"

            "Yeah?"

            Lucas swallows. He stares hard at Will. "Don't you find something... wrong with that?"

            Will uses his pinky nail to pick between his two front teeth. "Like what?"

            " _For helvede_ , Will."

            "Eh?"

            Lucas leans in, gripping the ends of the table lightly. "You let him use you?"

            "Do you have any idea what my job is? It's not _using_ –"

            "Yes, it is. It is. That is your boss. There is a difference between him and a– a Mickey," Lucas sneers. "Do you not have self-respect? What is the matter with you?"

            Will looks at Lucas. He sets the spoon down, and tilts his head as he studies Lucas over the flickering candlelight. In the moment that passes between them, the conversations around them continue on. Lucas is peripherally aware of them. Will is so quiet for once that Lucas can hear other people talking. Tickets to the theatre, rain on Wednesday. An appointment at the podiatrist's. Maria is visiting next week. Finally, when Lucas thinks he can stand that irate stare no longer, Will shifts and grabs his wallet from his back pocket. Lucas has noticed that Will does not carry the leather satchel with him on his nights off. Will throws down two crisp one hundred dollar bills.

            "Know what the funny thing is about Mickeys?" he asks. "They judge you, think you're dumb, that you don't know what you're doing. And they do all that while they're fucking you. But Daddy, he doesn't do that. He treats me like a professional. You could learn something from him."

            And Will rises and leaves the restaurant. Lucas watches him go, can still see him through the street-facing wall of windows as he picks up his car from the valet. Lucas feels glued to his seat and hot in his neck and face. Everything itches. He jolts when he feels a tender presence at his side.

            The young waitress, who is golden-ponytailed and smiling. "Can I get you anything else, Mr. Verger?"

 

*

 

Lucas leaves the restaurant in minutes, and he makes to turn the corner for the Harvard train station. Outside, it is pitch black overhead and the Cambridge neighborhood is aglow with florescence. Lucas' hands are shoved down into his pockets and he trudges along, gaze on the ground. And for some reason, he isn't so terribly surprised when the black Mercedes pulls up along the curb, rolling at a slow pace. The window rolls down and Lucas looks into the green eyes he saw moments ago over candlelight.

            Will shouts, "Get in the car!"

            Lucas says, "Stop moving it."

            "Fuck off, I'm not stopping for you!"

            Lucas sighs. It takes some effort but he makes it into the passenger's seat without falling onto the concrete. When the door is shut and he is tugging at his seatbelt, Will is pulling onto the main street and causing two other cars to blare loudly at him.

            "I'd thought you went home," Lucas says.

            "I am going home." Will glances over at Lucas. Even in the half-dark, he cannot hide that toothy grin of his. Will's teeth are stark white. Lucas wonders if he gets them professionally whitened. "You're coming with me."

            "I am not having sex with you."

            "Why not? You said some fucked up shit in there." Will jerks a thumb back towards the restaurant. "You owe me for hurting my feelings."

            "You were pretending."

            "Got your ass good, huh?"

            "Is this how you live your life?" Lucas looks at him, his illuminated profile. "Pretending these things don't matter when they obviously do?"

            Will comes, begrudgingly, to a stop at a red light. When he looks at Lucas, his eyes are incandescent. "But that's what everyone does."

 

*

 

He cannot say he does not like Will's apartment. He cannot say that at all. He has thought about it, since the last time he came here, half a prisoner and half a man fraught with his own curiosity. He was so sure, so terribly certain, that it would have been a hovel much like his own or perhaps worse. What confronted him when he stepped into it was wonder and horror and no small amount of shame. Though this he feels everywhere he goes.

            Will has once again disappeared into the hall and allowed Lucas freedom to wander. This time, he does take the liberty to touch the glass tops of tables, the marble bar melding the kitchen and open living room. He stands near the wall of windows and looks down onto the Common and the mounding darkness which is its foliage. On the way into the building, Lucas was struck with a stray cool gust. He supposes the leaves will turn soon. And with them, Suffolk will enliven. Lucas realizes that these past few weeks have been but a vacation. He will have to go back to work soon, and when he does he cannot have an errant whore nipping at his heels. He will have to put an end to this.

            "I'd shower or something if I thought you were going to fuck me," Will says, entering the room now in a cotton shirt and candy-striped pajama bottoms. He holds a beer in each hand, the same brand as last time. He hands one to Lucas, then traipses barefoot to the couch. "But since you're gonna be a dick again, I figure why bother."

            Lucas isn't sure what to say to that. He wanders over as Will grabs a remote and turns the television on. Will flips through the channels, the colors of the screen flashing over his lithe body, and Lucas eyes him over the beer.

            Will is half-smiling, and he lightly chuckles. "So, d'you think I was like for real pissed?"

            "What?"

            "Did you think I was _mad_? When I walked out of Amandine?" Will settles on a channel and tosses the remote against the other side of the couch. He curls his legs up and points his knees towards Lucas at his right. "Did I really get you?"

            "I don't know. I guess."

            "And did you mean all that stuff you said? About self-respect?"

            "Yes."

            Will sighs and glugs down half his beer. "How disappointing! You really are just another cranky old man."

            "It is not for the reason you think. I–" Lucas stops. He rubs a thumb against the condensation at the side of his bottle. "Will, how old are you?"

            "Twenty-three."

            Will is looking at him. As if expecting an explanation for where this is going. Lucas takes another infinitesimal sip of his beer then sets it on the coffee table beside Will's. He looks around the spacious room which is dimly lit, and at the television for the first time which is on some ridiculous-looking soft-core pornography. Lucas raises his eyebrow at Will who is grinning up at him, and scooting closer onto Lucas' cushion, into Lucas' space. Though, he supposes, this entire apartment is Will's space. In one breath, Lucas says, "I have a son."

            "Oh yeah?"

            "Yes. And he–" Lucas inhales lightly. This is all right. He does not have to go into detail. He can skim the surface. "He is very precious to me. He is young, much younger than you. And for some reason, when I– when I look at you, and I think of this way of living, I cannot help but to think of him going this way. And it frightens me."

            "Jesus, Lucas. You know, living like I do is hardly the end of the world. I make a great living. Look around."

            "I do not want this for my son."

            "Oh, please. Your son isn't going to be a whore." Will leans into Lucas' chest. "Unfortunately for him, he's probably going to end up like his boring dad."

            Lucas swallows wetly. He feels the heat of Will's breath at his neck, and the soft warmth of his mouth at the hinge of Lucas' jaw. He works up into the tender space under Lucas' ear.

            "Don't say that," Lucas breathes.

            Will is giggling softly. His knees are nearly in Lucas' lap, his hands against Lucas' chest. "Don't say what? That you're boring?" The hands move up to touch lightly at the cords of muscle in his neck, lingering at the collar of his plaid shirt. "Fine," he says, voice just under a whisper. "Tell me what you want him to be."

            "Normal," Lucas says quickly. "I want him to be a normal man."

            "Mmhmm. God, you're weird."

            "I don't want him to be like me."

            The softness of Will's lips on his skin. On his stubble. "Is he a nice kid?"

            Lucas' eyelashes flutter closed. " _Ja_."

            "Then he's already not like you."

            Will's left hand slides down the fabric of Lucas' shirt. While his mouth continues to work, he lets his fingertips rest lightly on Lucas' belt buckle. Lucas is half-lidded, and he sees over Will's dark curls the television: a woman writhing beneath a man. Will's fingers undo Lucas' belt so quickly it's hardly felt. Then his cool palm against the softness of Lucas' stomach. The band of his boxers. The fabric rustles and Will's mouth is open, wet, warm, moving along the line of his jaw. Lucas grips Will's thin wrist and wrenches it away.

            "Ow! Lucas, Jesus!"

            "That is enough," Lucas says, holding him at bay. "Calm down, Will."

            Will frees himself from Lucas' grasp and flops back against the couch cushions, lying prone with his legs still draped over Lucas' lap. "Me calm down? _You_ calm down. Fuck," he says, rubbing his wrist. "I knew you were rough. Gimme some warning next time."

            Lucas is quiet.

            Will turns his head and watches the television screen. He says, "I never told you, but when I first came to your apartment, you know, and I saw you and your place, I thought you were gonna smell terrible. The accent and everything. A lot of foreigners don't wash often. But being out with you and stuff, without your dirty place around, it's nice. You, I mean. You smell nice."

 

*

 

It's 1 AM. Lucas hadn't realized the time though he guesses that Will had by the way he looks at Lucas when it is brought up. The barest beginnings of an impish smile. Lucas remembers the reviews he's read on Will's feed: that he is a great actor, and that is what makes him so amazing. Sometimes Lucas doesn't think he's so great. He's overwhelmingly transparent at times like these. Then, Lucas remembers Amandine and the way Will looked at him. That was a fine performance, if nothing else. He tells Lucas that since the trains are shut for the night and Will isn't driving anywhere, he will just have to stay over.

            He is introduced to the hall he has never wandered. Will shows him the bathroom, which is large and marbled, and then to his bedroom which is broached by a king-size bed and hemmed with wall-length windows that look out onto a stone patio. The room is dark, and there is no light but the light of the moon.

            "I can't sleep yet," Will says, shrugging. "It's too early."

            He leaves the room and Lucas to his own devices. In the silver light, Lucas sheds his jeans and shirt. He folds them neatly and sets them on an armchair at the back of the room near a reading light. Lucas is partially sure Will hasn't read anything in recent years. He goes to the bed and slips in between the sheets, the thread counts of which must be sky-high. He tries not to think of it: what Will must have done here. Who he must have done it with. But he doesn't think Will brings Mickeys back to his home.

            Lucas thinks suddenly, _But then what am I?_

            From the living room, Lucas can just barely hear the television. Lucas thinks of Will's flippant laughter when confronted with the idea that Lucas' son might grow up to be like him. A whore like him. And he was so certain that it would not happen. But somewhere in Will's past, in his formative years, surely there is something that jolted him and lead him on this path. A man, cloaked in shadow, whose actions reverberated through the Ages of Will's being. And in this way, Mickeys can take advantage and Mason Verger can take advantage and Will thinks it is in some way respectable.

            Lucas curls into himself. In his hand is his cell phone and to lull him, as he has come to do on many nights, he looks into Will's Twitter, his Instagram, his reviews. The thousands of comments on thousands of pictures. His life, encrypted in ones and zeros. Ones and fives.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts appreciated!


	10. That Easy

When the boy was seven, he was wracked with nightmares. He would often come into Lucas and Kirsten's bedroom in the night, cowering, wide-eyed. Just those thin pale legs in the hall light, at the threshold of the door. The outline of his frail freckle-painted body. His crocheted blanket in his arms. It had been with him since his birth, made by Kirsten's mother. He would stand there for a long moment, listening to his parents' breathing, divining by it whether they were awake. Lucas shifted in the duvet and pillows, the sound that allowed the boy to come forth.

            Many mornings, after the boy had gone to elementary school, Kirsten looked across the breakfast table to Lucas. "Don't you think he should sleep in his own room? I'm not getting any rest." Her face was drawn in the morning light.

            Lucas said, "I won't refuse him. The nightmares will stop."

            "But what about us?"

            "We'll be fine."

            It happened somewhere around three nights a week. Four, if it rained. Thunderstorms heightened the effect of the nightmares. He saw shadows and heard noises. When Kirsten complained of waking every morning with the boy's foot or fist in her side, Lucas told her it was her fault for those monster stories.

            Lucas' favorite nights. In the dark of the bedroom, in the tumultuous sea of their bed, the boy situated himself between his parents. From midnight to the early morning, Lucas laid in plumeria-misted bliss. The sweet sleeping breath of his son. Oh, that warm little body. Lucas curled himself around it, and felt it pulsating lightly next to him like the core of a star. He pulled the boy to his chest, or simply stared at him, at the small ribcage rising and falling in peace. To know such peace. It is the best thing about children. Lucas has always thought that.

            One night, Kirsten coaxed Lucas on top of her. It had been a week, and he could not put it off any longer. Just the instant before they were conjoined, that familiar barefoot padding sounded and stopped at the door. It pushed open, raining in the pale blue hallway light. Lucas looked over and saw that sylph-like silhouette. Kirsten moved to cover herself but there was little to be seen in the half light. Lucas welcomed the boy into the bed, over Kirsten's small protests. In minutes, the boy was asleep. His pink lips parted, his eyelashes long against his cheeks.

            Lucas, slowly, moved the blankets and Kirsten's hands away. She muttered incredulities.

            _He's right here._

_Are you mad?_

_Lucas–_

            But she could not resist for long. She felt it, the longing he put into his movements, the heat he poured over her. He was present, and so very different from his pins and needles recession – that life-saving magic trick he usually performed while inside her. He was present and accounted for, and she kissed him here and nibbled him there, and placed the heel of her hand to her mouth at the wet height of her passion. And Lucas moved his hand beneath the waves of sheets, the ocean floor of the mattress. His fingertips ghosting along the smooth warmth of the boy's arm.

 

                                *                                          

 

Lucas' eyelashes flutter, and the suddenness of sunlight keeps his eyes from opening for a full minute. He rubs his face with both hands and turns on his side. It feels like rolling into cumulus. His bed at home is not like this. Nor does his bed at home have a warm, heated thing at his side. His bed at home is cool, and small, and vast, all at once.

            Lucas opens his eyes to find a head of wild dark hair in front of him. It smells of berries, and something else Lucas can't quite discern. Will is half-naked and pressed with his back against Lucas' chest. Just over his smooth shoulder, Lucas sees he is hugging a pillow with both arms. It's time to leave.

            Rolling back over with little regard for whether or not he wakes Will, Lucas grabs his phone from the night stand. With no more stability, Will rolls onto his back and makes a strained sound.

            "The hell're you doin?" he asks, words a deep slur.

            Lucas looks over at him, wrapped up in covers. "Pardon?"

            Will moans and opens his bleary eyes. In the sunlight, they are crystalline and watery from sleep. He looks at Lucas now standing between the bed and the open wall of windows, in nothing but his plaid boxers. "I said," he says, clearing his throat, "what're you doing? Get back in bed."

            "Do not order me. I have to go."

            Will makes a general motion with a flopping hand. "You obviously wanna fuck. Come here and do it."

            Lucas is aware of what he's referring to. It has been so long since he's slept in bed with a warm body. And he cannot be certain – he cannot remember rightly – but he thinks he must have dreamt of his son. When he was small and in their marriage bed like a sentient stuffed animal. And in the morning, so smiley and bouncy. That grin, the twig-like arms around Lucas' neck.

            Lucas jolts at Will's shifting in the blankets. He lies on his stomach, legs kicking up behind him. He says, "Uh huh."

            Lucas turns and goes for his clothes on the chair. He begins to dress quickly and efficiently, with not a glance spared to Will and not another thought for his son. When the jeans are zipped, the shirt buttoned, he moves towards the open bedroom door.

            "Oh fine," Will says, tugging the covers back over his head. "I'm not in the mood anyway."

            Down the hall, and into the living room. He toes on his shoes at the door and hears from the bedroom: "I'm just _kid_ ding! Of course I am!" Lucas opens the door. "Okay, whatever. Text me! You're running out of time."

            Lucas leaves the apartment.

 

                                    *                                    

 

Lucas' sleeping schedule is thrown completely off. He has no idea when his body needs sleep anymore, or when it just wants it. The sun means little, the moon means even less. Throughout the next day, Lucas cannot help but to glue himself to his phone. Will's Twitter feed, his live reviews, his Instagram. He cannot stand the line at Starbucks, he had a rape role-play last night, he took a picture of a large rat in a gutter. From time to time, Lucas finds himself staring at the lone text from Artisyn, who asked him his knowledge of foals. And he thinks to what she's said, and he wonders if he could say it. If he could say it aloud. He has never been able to. Not even when he was young, when it was but a playful thing. You cannot be what he is at fifteen, at seventeen, at twenty, he thinks. It is simply a love of young bodies. A love of nature in full bloom. Pups are ready for breeding at just a year old. There was a time when he comforted himself with this knowledge. When he was bitter at the definitions all manner of academia attached to him. Humans are wrong, he thought. They aren't normal. Nature had it right in the first place.

            What is lovelier than a rose newly opened?

 

*

 

During a muggy August day, Lucas makes a trek into the middle of the city. He was sent an email earlier in the week for the mandatory pre-autumn semester faculty meeting. The word mandatory was bolded and underlined. Lucas shows up at the Frank Sawyer Building at Ashburton Place. It is not so far from the Common, and from Will's apartment. The cool of the building is welcome on Lucas' sweaty neck, his brown hair clinging to his temples. He is sure he looks like any bum on the street, and the associate and tenured professors don't seem to recognize him.

            In the meeting, Lucas has little to do. The provost speaks at them, as if they were students. Lucas tries to do this as secretly as he knows his students do: he glances from time to time under the table. The florescent lights from on high cause a glare and he tilts the screen of his phone, while looking over the top of his glasses occasionally at the provost.

            A tap at his shoulder blade. "Hey. Hey."

            Lucas jolts, drops his phone, and a few associates look back over their shoulders at him. When Lucas gingerly retrieves it, he glances back to find Noah; his smile is surrounded by an expression of pure exhaustion. Still, he gives a thumbs up.

            "Coffee after?" he whispers.

            The provost continues to speak on student attendance and class participation percentages.

            Lucas nods.

                       

*

 

The café is as remembered, though it has been a while since Lucas entered it. Half of him is on edge, thinking Will is going to stroll through the glass door and accost him. Half of him is lulled by the scent of chicory and cake. They sit in the back near the small island of plastic forks and sugar packets. In the sun of the afternoon, or what bit of it can reach them here, Noah looks, finally and strangely, older than Lucas. He has always been. But he has not looked it. His face is drawn, his crow's feet have multiplied. His hair has grayed.

            "You know what's strange?" Noah asks, sipping from his latte. "We've never done this before. Why have we never done this before, Lucas?"

            Lucas wears foam on his top-lip. He tries discreetly licking it away. "What? Do what?"

            "This. Hang out."

            There it is. Though Lucas is surprised. He expects it from Will's generation – the constant need to be seen by someone, anyone. He does not expect it from his own. Though maybe there is a difference between America and Denmark that permeates even age. The conversations continue on around them. Noah looks at Lucas for a long time before shrugging and smiling.

            "Well. We're here now."

            "Yes."

            "So, how was your summer break?"

            Lucas sips again. He looks down at his phone sitting on the table. Noah's is across from him.

            Noah follows his gaze. "Oh, right. So how did it go? Did the number blocking work?"

            "For a time," Lucas says quietly. "Then he just got a new number."

            "He?"

            Lucas nearly spills his latte. He manages not to, manages only to drip it down his fingers. He replaces the cup onto the small ceramic saucer, and presses his lips together. He still tastes foam.

            Noah snorts some small laughter. "Wow, Lucas. I never figured... but it's all right, you know. You don't have to be ashamed, of course not."

            "It's not... it's not like that."

            "Listen, man–"

            "It's not!" Lucas looks up sharply. The conversations around them pause, just minutely, and resume. Lucas droops his shoulders. "I'm sorry."

            Noah is quiet for a long while. He looks at his own phone, a newer model than Lucas'. "You know how..." He pauses, shakes his head. Drums his fingertips against the table. "That's what this is for. DS and things like that, you know. It's so you can try out things, do things, that you don't normally do when you're with a real lover or your wife, or–"

            "Noah–"

            "And you know how it is when you finally get to try it? What you've been looking for all that time but never found. When you finally get it, you know. It's such a rush. And places like these, they become some kind of obsession. Like, who wants just one taste of their favorite food? Or their favorite beer?" He shrugs, laughs again. His eyes are gray and, when he looks up at Lucas, they are nearly empty. "It's hard to stop, isn't it? DS is great, but then, I don't know, maybe people aren't meant to get exactly what they want on demand. Maybe it's damaging. It's like ordering a pizza, I mean, they've made it that quick. That easy. Maybe it's not supposed to be that way. A human isn't a pizza."

            Lucas furrows his brow lightly. "I thought you wanted this. Normality."

            "Right. I do. It's just." Noah finishes the rest of his latte in a large gulp. The look on his face seems as if the dregs are bitter. "I'm not sure it really is normal."

 

*

 

Lucas rides the train home. He feels weary and cannot stand, and situates himself at the end of a car on a handicapped seat. He feels his phone in his side pocket like an anchor that would drag him down to the depths and keep him there. Across from him, above a woman with ear buds in and radiating static-lined music, is an advertisement. Just simple words.

 

_MICKEY WANTS WHAT MICKEY WANTS_

 

*

 

He thought he could wait until Will's next night off, but he can't. Will has taken to the habit of texting Lucas and demanding that they spend time together on those appointed days – usually around 2 PM when he wakes. He has not texted Lucas, but Lucas travels nonetheless across the city at 5 PM on a Wednesday, crowded in by a full car. He stands for lack of sitting room. He looks around at the people who are his companions and all he can see are the crowns of heads as everyone looks down into the bottomless well of their cell phones. Children, small and pink, linger by their parents unawares. They are too young for phones. And Lucas, openly, bitterly, mourns their early passing: when they will be given one and the way they frolic like wild fawns will diminish. They will become like their parents, their older brothers and sisters. They will be lost to time.

            Lucas disembarks at the Downtown Crossing station, trudges along the few blocks to the Charm Ridge building which stands black and gleaming against the burnished sky. Lucas manages himself as he travels up that spire, and the long hallway thereafter. He knocks on Will's front door.

            He waits. He feels the phone's rectangular body in his pocket. It has the mass of a star.

            The door opens to reveal Will's confused expression. He is leaning against the doorjamb in naught but a fluffy white towel which is monogrammed with his initials in blue cursive. Another smaller towel he holds to his shining wet curls.

            "Lucas?"

            "Do you have a moment?"

            "Uh."

            Will steps back unsurely. He watches as Lucas enters the apartment which is flooded with deep dusklight from the walls of windows. Will shuts the door and returns to Lucas with a grin.

            "I bet I know what you're here for," he taunts. Tosses his wet tresses under Lucas' nose as he passes by. "Why'd you pick a night I'm working? Well, I guess we can make it kind of quick–"

            "I am not here for that." Lucas looks at the carpet.

            Will sighs. "Oh yeah?"

            "Yes. I have to tell you something."

            "Jesus. I'm a whore, not a therapist. Can't this wait until tomorrow or something? Why couldn't you text me?"

            Lucas looks up, and is struck by that. Yes, it makes sense. Why couldn't he have texted it? Surely it would be easier, to put it on imaginary stationary and send it away. It would hardly exist that way. It might almost be playful.

            Will taps his foot. "Lucas, I–"

            "And when I tell you," he says, turning to fully face Will, "you need to leave me alone. No more of this. Do you understand? When I tell you, you will know why I have been refusing you. You and Artisyn. Why I would refuse anyone from your agency. Because when I ordered, I did not know what a colt was."

            "I _know_ that, Lucas–"

            "I thought what I would be getting was a foal."

            Will looks at Lucas. In the shadow of the oncoming evening light, his eyes are so terribly green. He had been furiously rubbing his hair with the towel but his motions slow. He lowers the towel and Lucas feels a dull thud in the back of his head.

            "Figures. You're one of those types. Well. That's whatever, I guess. I can do that," he says, pursing his mouth slightly. He's looking up, aside, as if in thought.

            Lucas blinks, his eyebrows tenting. "What does that mean?"

            "What do you _think_ it means? There _are_ no foals in Boston. None of the big agencies have them. Daddy certainly finds them disgusting. But we can pretend–"

            "No," Lucas says. "No."

            "Listen. You _owe_ me."

            "I'm not doing this," Lucas says and turns for the door. He never reaches it. Will is suddenly before him, his back against the hard wood, the light of the dying sun in his eyes.

            "Hey! You're not listening, Lucas. There's a staff meeting tomorrow, and Daddy's gonna wanna talk about the ad campaign–"

            Lucas takes his hand and plants it flat against Will's chest, shoving him further against the door. The back of his head bangs against it and Will winces. But he does not move to take Lucas' hand away. Lucas inhales, exhales. "If you think I am going to compromise my life one more minute for a mouthy whore who does not know enough to be ashamed of himself, you are insane. I want to be alone. I need to be alone. I don't want to interact with you any longer."

            Will's eyes narrow immediately. Left canine slightly bared. It is blinding white. "What do _you_ know about being ashamed?" His voice lowers, desperately, as if they are in a church. "Do you have any _idea_ how disgusting you are? I'm trying to be professional about this, but God, Lucas, you're fucking sick."

            Lucas knocks Will back into the door again, harder. Will's head smacks against it, and he grits his teeth to keep from crying out. Lucas says, "Don't come near me again."

            "Why? You fucking hypocrite– why? Why do you get to ruin my life and then refuse to fix it?"

            "I–"

            "And you think telling me you like to fuck little kids means everything's all better? That I..." Will slows to a stop when Lucas' hand slides from his chest. When Lucas backs up, and his eyes behind his glasses begin to water, so very quickly, and then overflow.

            "I did not. I did not do that," he says, voice choked with his accent and his own sorrow. "I never–"

            "Oh, what?" Will cries. " _What_? I'm supposed to feel sorry for you? That it?"

            "I-I–" The backs of his knees hit the couch edge and he falls into sitting against the armrest, his fists bunched into the fabric of his jeans. He looks at his knees, tears obstructed slightly by the edges of his glasses. Then pattering, softly, on his knuckles. "I did not– I never–"

            Will takes a step toward him. "What? You never what?"

            "I never did that to him," Lucas shouts, his mouth caving in. He pushes the heel of one hand to the corner of his mouth, his cheek, to swipe away a tear and saliva. "I never, ah, I never would do that to m-my son, I just... I just..." He presses his palm fully to his mouth and shuts his eyes, spilling hot tears across his face. Into his hand he says something which is badly slurred and muffled: "I could not help myself."

            The room is quiet, save Lucas' soft crying. Will stands nearby, now fully dry, holding the corner of his towel. Lucas cannot tell his expression – the apartment grows darker and darker and his vision is badly blurred. Finally, he rubs fitfully beneath his glasses at his red eyes. He inhales, exhales, tries to find rhythm but the stilted breaths continue on, in spite of everything he wants.

            Will, finally, exhales. His voice is tight when he speaks. "Your son, huh? Then that's why you're alone. Guess I'm not as great as I thought if I didn't guess that."

            Lucas' lips are covered in mucus and saliva. Blearily, he looks up through parted fingers. Will is staring off to the side, his brow furrowed in thought. At this second, Lucas is filled not simply with sorrow but an inordinate amount of bitterness towards the whore. He says in a spiteful whisper, "Wh... what do you want me to do?"

            Will looks at him again. He drops his towel.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Masks off.


	11. Far Cry

"Come here."

            And he leaves. Through the living room, footfalls as silent as a cat's. Through bleared and unsure vision, glasses half down his face, Lucas watches Will's naked form diminish into the hall. When he is gone, Lucas looks to the front door. It is there for him, as plain as a hand when he is falling off a cliff. But he knows he deserves no such hand. He rises from the couch with a wet sniffle, and he goes where Will has gone.

            In the bedroom. Will stands with his back to Lucas in the archway. The bedside table's small lamp glows – the only light in the room save the city lights which stand against the deep purple sky in lieu of stars. Lucas looks from the buildings standing staggered against the oncoming night. Then at Will, who looks over his shoulder at Lucas. His body is like marble.

            Will turns to the side, grabbing at the sleeve of Lucas' shirt. He pulls Lucas gently and Lucas allows himself to be taken in. Will angles him, places his hands on Lucas' shoulders and sits him on the edge of the bed. Lucas looks up into Will's eyes. They are green and still as pond scum. Lucas feels lead in his hands. They sit on his lap. Lucas swallows over a watery lump in his throat. As he stares at Will's body, the fine muscles of his quads, his hard stomach, his hairless chest, he feels another, larger lump in his throat.       

            Will says, "Stop crying."

            "I cannot help it."

            Will presses his lips together. Lucas sees it cross his face – that this will be more trouble than it's worth. But written there, also, and perhaps over the previous statement, is a hard-headedness. Will knows he has made a claim and he has made his intentions clear. Stopping now, Lucas realizes, would mean him losing face. And he knows Will is too proud to do that. He will go forward, and Lucas will go along with it. The off-ramp is passed. They are committed to this road.

            Slowly. Will sets one knee on the bed at Lucas' side, steadying himself with a light hold on Lucas' shoulders. Then the other knee. He settles his weight down. Takes the glasses from Lucas' ruddy, ruined face. He leans to set them on the bedside table.

            "Can you see?"

            "Just... just a bit."

            "Good," Will whispers. He dips his head, leans in. Arms wrap around Lucas' neck and Lucas can suddenly feel the wet warmth of a mouth at the hinge of his jaw. Hands move down to Lucas' chest. Take apart buttons with a flick of thin fingers. Lucas feels bile in his low throat. He thinks it must be the words he said, their after-echoes still there inside him. He smells Will's hair, like pecans and honey. His shirt is undone and Will's fingers thread through his ocher chest hair. Lucas feels himself crying anew.

            Will pulls back slightly. He removes himself to the floor, positioned between Lucas' legs. His knees make a soft sound in the plush carpet. Lucas looks down as Will undoes the zipper. His forest green eyes are dark. Lucas can still feel the wetness at his jaw.

            Hesitantly, he holds a hand out to Will, pausing him. "I... I don't think this is... that this will work."

            Will snorts softly. "I can make it work. Don't worry."

            He adjusts the front of Lucas' boxers and pulls him, soft and smooth, out of the fabric. Says nothing more until he dips his head and takes Lucas fully into his mouth. Lucas grunts, gripping the bed's edge. He makes another sound immediately after, when Will's tongue encircles him, when Will undulates his mouth in a peculiar way and moves Lucas into the back of his throat with one long, effortless swallow. Lucas jolts, and he is continuing to cry, his tears falling from the tip of his nose into Will's hair. Lucas' stomach tightens. He jerks again when Will adds his hand, his warm soft hand. Will's back muscles work with his throat contracting, with his even and slightly loud nose-breathing. Shadows and light pass over his shoulder blades. Will draws up, with such pressure, millimeter by millimeter, and his eyes open wide like butterflies, looking up at Lucas suddenly. Lucas watches his own flushed flesh appear out of the whore's mouth, dripping wet. Will releases him with a cradling caress of his tongue.

            Lucas looks at him. Will continues his stare unbroken, but he moves his hand up. The grip so tight it nearly hurts. And parts his lips again, this time dripping with thick globs of saliva. Will takes just an inch into his mouth and lathes it with a circular motion. Lucas makes a strained sound and he watches as Will's other hand works diligently between his own legs. The muscles in his bicep, the shadows moving with every flex and contraction. Will seems to notice his lost attention and he stops immediately – everything. Lucas doesn't realize he'd been holding his breath until this moment, when it comes rushing out of him in a huff.

            Will rises again, back into Lucas' lap. Roughly shucks Lucas of his shirt, then pulls his jeans down his thighs, taking the boxers with them. A hand flat to Lucas' chest, he pushes him into the soft blankets. Lucas allows himself to be pushed. His face feels puffy, almost stinging. Will straddles his lap, and Lucas can feel himself rubbing against the smooth curve of Will's backside. Will rocks back minutely, shifting with both hands on Lucas' soft stomach. He rubs there, briefly.

            "What does he call you?" Will asks.

            "Wh... What?"

            Will takes a hand up, through Lucas' dark hair which is damp now with sweat. "What does your son call you?"

            Lucas is hit suddenly with the overwhelming need to throw up. Or kill himself. He doesn't know which would fix everything. He doesn't know if either would.

            He doesn't answer right away. Will does not seem overly bothered. Leans back slightly, balancing himself with one hand behind on Lucas' knee. The other reaches for the nightstand and fishes for a small bottle of lubricant and a condom package. The bottle is clear in the light and its contents slosh into Will's cupped palm. He rises up and uses two fingers to stretch and oil himself. With such motion as if he is doing it for business purposes. Lucas supposes this is part of his declaration: _I'm trying to be professional._

            Will's hand on him. The slippery way Lucas' flesh passes through his palm. The tiny tear of foil and the condom rolled on with a practiced hand. Lucas' eyes shut, and for a long moment he keeps them closed. Presses his lips together. Lucas mutters, "This is sick."

            "Yeah," Will says. He continues to work his hand on Lucas. That undulating pressure which keeps him hard as anything. "Yeah, it is. But Mickey wants wh–"

            "Do _not_ say it," Lucas says, and feels the bile again. He opens his eyes, slightly. In the shade of his eyelashes, Will is a wisp of shadow. He is something from a dreamscape. Lucas says, " _Far_."

            Will's shadow form is nodding. His hips move – Lucas can feel it, can feel him position Lucas, but in this way he cannot quite make out who Will is. He looks thinner this way, just the shadow of a young man. Just the shadow of a boy. Lucas wants to turn the light off completely but he dare not speak another word. He could not trust himself now. He does not know who he is, and he cannot trust someone he does not know. Without warning, Lucas feels the pressure of Will sitting back and there is only slight resistance before Lucas feels himself squeezed fully into a fresh heat that holds close to him at every inch.

            Lucas does not move until Will is fully seated. He does not breathe. His hands shake, tremble like he's having withdrawals. Yet he knows it cannot be – he has never rightly had what he's wanted. Never, in all his long years. Though he has come so. Achingly. Close.

            Will's hands: so gentle and soft. The very light touch of just his fingertips on Lucas' now taught stomach. His breath, Lucas can hear it. Staccato breathing, and slightly higher pitched. Lucas' eyelashes flutter, somewhere between seeing and not seeing. Then, two thin fingers rise from his stomach to gently shut Lucas' eyes fully. Lucas allows this. He is in the dark, and Will moves his hips forward and with something like a pained sigh, he stops. He whines, just a little. Lucas swallows, eyebrows furrowing. His stomach, his thighs, are all afire. He needs Will to move.

            As if Will can sense this, he does move – and half a second later stops. He makes that pained sound again. And Lucas, bidden by it, creates some similar sound which is nothing if not confusion and a simmering heat that is deeper and hotter than the one currently kindled. He licks his lips as Will's hips move stilted again. He knows Will knows how to do this – it would be ludicrous if he did not. This is what he does all night, nearly every night. Lucas imagines he has tried every position imaginable.

            The suddenness of Will's body bending forward. His weight is light enough. He bends until his head is nearing the crook of Lucas' neck, his curls mingling with Lucas' hair. He breathes into Lucas' ear: " _Far_."

            Lucas makes a sound. He has never made this sound before.

            Will's voice is so soft. So light and curiously higher. His lips brush the cartilage of the ear: "It hurts."

            Lucas groans. He tilts his head back into the mattress, the sheets and covers. This arches him up just a bit and he forces himself minutely deeper into Will.

            So terribly soft: "Please."

            Lucas wants to tell him to stop. But his hands– his hands are hovering over Will's hips as lightly as Will's fingers on his stomach, as Will's lovely lilted whisper in his ear that shoots straight into his groin, into his thigh muscles. He turns his face into Will's and gathers more of that warmth. There is a pulsating sensation inside him, that strobes a sear throughout his outer extremities.

            Will pushes back, his back bowed, the motion stilted and terrible and virginal. He says, coupled with a pained whine, "Make it stop."

            His legs are hairless. Lucas had not noticed it before, but as he brings his hands to span their sides, he grips, and he feels inches of silky skin. He has grabbed the boy in just this such a way, and not so terribly long ago. When they were new. Their relationship was unfettered by Kirsten's accusations and Lucas' own inabilities to help himself at the boy's coming pre-teen status. When he was just seven and in love with wrestling, fighting. He was a riotous child, this inclination hiked up by his newfound friends in elementary school and the fights he would see older children engage in. Lucas could walk down the hall. Lucas could be sitting in his home office. Out in the woods behind the house. And all of a sudden, the boy would pounce like the smallest of lynxes and just as agile. Lucas would feign injury, fall to the ground, to the grass. He remembers looking up at that jovial face closer than the infinite blue sky. The way the sun caught in his brown hair. His thin limbs warm from the day. Scalp and body perfumed with sweat and a piquant odor so wholly belonging to male children. His bouncing weight on Lucas' groin. His grin. His: _Far!_

            In that moment, in that instant, with his whole hands wrapped around the thin stalks of those boyish thighs, he thought, _This could be enough. I could do this and never do more. I could do this and never cause him harm._

            But now, when he grips Will with all the withheld strength of twelve long years and forces himself up into him with an agonized groan, he realizes that no, that could never have been enough. He would have always wanted more. So much more than a child could give. And by this right, it could only ever be taken.

            So Lucas takes.

            Shoves himself up further on the mattress, feet planted full on the bed. Hands on the boy's hips and grips him full where he has only gently touched before. But this is not playtime in the woods, nor is it the night where Kirsten saw them together, when she screamed and cried at Lucas. This is apart from that, and this is different. The boy makes a sound, breathless with the sudden momentum of thrusting into him. It is so sweet in its likeness to outright crying. Lucas holds him still and thrusts up in nothing that could be called a rhythm. His outer edges are frayed. He's having trouble keeping it in.

            Such tender graspings: the boy is clutching at him. His chest hair, the corner of his lightly stubbled jaw. Grabbing at anything for purchase or help. Oh, Lucas has dreamed of this. He has dreamed how the boy would look, a sweat-soaked face which is a mixture of Lucas himself and Kirsten, and, strangely, something else, someone else, someone wholly himself. Such an extreme pink to his cheeks. Such a glazed look in his eyes. That open mouth, red mouth, red with the hint of candy.

            Lucas curls up, wraps his arms around the boy's tiny back. He takes his mouth in a kiss. Sloppy, ill-met, half muffling pained cries, the most perfect thing. The boy is crying _Far Far Far_ in such stuttering starts and stops, like he has forgotten what he meant to say – quit? Quit, Daddy, quit it? Lucas could not if he tried.

            _I have loved you_ , Lucas wants to say as he turns to boy onto his front. _Everyone I have seen and loved before you was only a sliver, a shadow, of the love I would one day come to know._ He removes himself – a pale instant which is torment augmented – and moves around to get the boy on his knees. The perfect slope of his back. Lucas uses touch alone to guide him. Like a newborn kitten and his mother, sight is unnecessary. _You are my flesh and my blood. I gave my arteries to you._

            He shoves in and the angle is slick and hot and abyssal.

            Lucas: on hands and knees above the boy, rocketing himself down into him. He thinks he must be crying again. The boy _does_ sound to be crying, screaming, and there is, of course, the instinct to calm the boy but there is another instinct that overrides this. And it is the elder of the notions, that which was born when Lucas himself was born. For, he knows this deeply, he was the type to have been born with the affliction. There was no tragedy in his childhood to make him such a way. There was no cataclysm. He was his own harbinger. He always will be.

            Lucas is dripping sweat and every muscle in his body is groaning, is resisting this strange usage and longing for more. If Lucas could use the boy as a coffin, he would. He would lie in him and _rot_. Let maggots cover them both and turn them to meal and dust and then, blissfully, wonderfully, not even that anymore.

            He says, sighs, savors the word "Marcus," as he comes. Flush up against the boy's used, punctured body. With the last bit of effort left in him, and with the echo of their flesh hitting against one another, his hips stutter. He makes a sound like dying. A large breath escapes him and he doubles over, the front plane of his body connecting with the boy's sweat-slick back. His face half in the pillows and sheets. His breath wracking his entire body.

            Slowly. Slowly, the boy begins to shift under him. Just a slide of his shins against the bed sheets and a small, wondering noise. Lucas nudges his face into the bony shoulder. He kisses it, eyes still closed.

            "Lucas."

            Lucas jolts, and the suddenness causes the one being to part into its two original forms. Lucas opens his eyes as he sits back on his heels. Watches blearily as Will slowly rises from his knees and, with some knotted effort, turns over to lie on his back. His long legs in a jumble. His hair in bunches and knots from Lucas' gripping. His mouth wet from Lucas' kiss. There is color in his cheeks not unlike a furnace. In the low lamplight, both men stare at each other. Their breaths, once heightened and ricocheting from their lungs, slowly even.

            Will exhales, and lowers himself against the wealth of pillows. One arm spread across them, the other propping his head up. He looks out into the night-lit city.

            "I'm late for work," he says.

            Lucas swallows. It's highly audible.

            Will looks at him again. "That his name, Marcus? Your son?"

            "Y–" His voice dies in his throat.

            "Okay."

            Will sits still for a second longer. His legs are slightly parted and Lucas can see there the glistening of the lubricant, and how he is red and opened. Lucas did that. Looking further up, he notices Will is still slightly rigid, though he did not come. Lucas doesn't know if that's rare for him or not. For any whore. He looks at his own hands and remembers the warmth he experienced, the softness. His son was here, in this room. He was in Lucas' arms. And now he is gone. Lucas looks up at Will again as he rises from the bed.

            At the side of the bed, on the floor, are Lucas' clothes. Will takes his shirt and uses it to roughly wipe the lubricant and sweat from between his legs. He tosses it down. Over his shoulder, he says, "Told you I'm good. Anyway, you'll come with me to the meeting tomorrow. Let's put an end to this."

            "Yes," Lucas says. He rises from the bed and goes into the bathroom. Through the door and even over the whir of the fan, he can hear Will in the other rooms finding clothes and readying himself for a night of work. Lucas rids himself of the used condom; ties it and throws it into the trash can. It lies amidst simple, honest things: used floss, tissues, a cardboard toilet roll. He soon dresses and he and Will leave the apartment together, filing out of the elevator one after another. Will is in a dark blue button up, jeans, and he is freshly spritzed with cologne. His satchel across his chest. Curls nicely brushed. To look at him, you could not tell what he has done. Lucas rides the train home, smelling like lubricant and condom film, glasses smudged, hair wild, and sobbing.

           

 

           

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wham.


	12. Company Time

Music plays, turned down low. Indiscriminate. Lucas can barely hear it; just the small thumps of the bass, a hallmark seemingly of every music Will allows himself to be around. They sit in the Mercedes at a red light just after the shopping district and, strolling in front of them, are hundreds of people. The post-work crowd, the pre-evening class graduate students, those rushing to the corner Starbucks. Lucas watches them, and the sky above them which is deep blue with the oncoming sunset.

            As the car moves again, Will jams the gas pedal and they lurch forward. Lucas eyes him. They've said little to each other since Will picked him up. Will looks decently rested but Lucas knows from looking in the mirror just an hour ago that he himself looks like hell and he made no subsequent attempt to correct it. He'd cried all night: on the train, coming up the building stairs, in his bed. His face is red, swollen with grief. His clothes are wrinkled and quite probably dirty. He picked them off the floor.

            They move into Back Bay, the buildings rising high around them, and Lucas turns again to look at Will. His bouncy curls, his evergreen gaze ahead. Lucas exhales heavily.

            Will hikes up his shoulders like a cat, hands gripping tight on the wheel. "Jesus Christ. Will you stop doing that?"

            "Doing what?" Lucas asks.

            "You keep looking at me and sighing!"

            Lucas looks for a moment longer, then turns away to look out of his window.

            He can hear Will's fingertips drumming lightly against the top of the wheel. The light way they touched Lucas' stomach last night. The light way he touched everywhere. Lucas isn't quite sure he's ever felt more shame in his life. And not just that. An entire tidal wave of black emotion washed over him and took up residence in his gut. It has yet to leave.

            The Mercedes pulls up in front of the tall glass office building where Lucas has been before. He looks up at it as Will parks.

            "Listen. Let's just get through this meeting, then you never have to talk to me again," Will says. He unstraps his seatbelt and as Lucas does the same, Will catches his gaze and holds it. "Hey, I gotta know. What're you gonna say in there?"

            "The truth," Lucas says.

                                   

*

 

In the night, when Lucas was puffy-faced and ragged in bed, long before sleep would take pity on him, he viewed the live-feed reviews as they came in that night.

 

5/5 stars

            Great sense of what it means to be a whore. – JO

 

5/5 stars

            My dad and brother have been ordering from here for years – DS, not the colt category. I'm the first one to do it, I think. I wasn't disappointed. Wondermint made me feel at home. He heard me, listened to what I wanted. And he was so calm, I barely know how to describe it. If you've had him before, maybe you know. Distant, but not? Anyway, he was gorgeous. – W

 

4/5 stars

            pictures don't do him justice – he might be one of the most beautiful guys i've ever seen. only reason for the 4 stars is because he was late – AS

 

1/5 stars

            No show. Wtf?? – BOH

 

*

 

In the elevator on the way up, Lucas looks at Will – this time furtively. They stand facing the golden doors, the dying sun warming their backs through the glass. Will's face is stony, his expression faraway. When Lucas eyes him downwards, he sees the whore's fingertips rubbing lightly against each other. There is slight perspiration on the inside of his palm.

            Lucas looks back at the door.

                       

*

 

"Will! You're here! God, you– Oh! Sorry!"

            The receptionist – Lucas can only just remember her name – is leaned over the top of her desk, hands gripping the lacquered walnut finish. Her hair is up in a ponytail, eyes a wide blue, and even wider upon seeing Lucas standing at Will's side. They walk out of the elevator into the lush lobby. Lucas' shoes squish into the plush carpeting.

            Will shakes his head at her, hands in his pockets. "Abigail, he already knows my name. It's whatever."

            "Oh... well. Listen, Daddy's hella pissed."

            "Yeah." Will looks to Lucas, with an expression Lucas cannot read. "Maybe I can change that. Are he and Artisyn in the conference room already?"

            Abigail sits back in her swivel chair. Ticks the names off on her thin fingers. "Yeah, and Maculet and Frivolitee and Blyss–"

            Will interrupts with a groan. "What're _they_ all doing here?"

            She shrugs. "Dunno. Daddy never tells me shit. 'Cept that you're in hot water."

            "Thanks, Abigail."

            She waves them across the room. Will leads the way, past the office they entered when last Lucas was here. As he goes by the reception desk, he can smell the light little-girl scent that Abigail wears. She has both bony elbows on the desktop, hands propping up her chin. She smiles like she has never known a bad day. "Have a good meeting, Mr. Mickey!  Good luck, Will!"

            This office space is far deeper than Lucas previously thought. The hallway is dark, thin. Will's footsteps ahead of him sound dull and leaden. Lucas remembers both he and Artisyn speaking on scolding. Perhaps that is what Will is fearful of. Why he walks this way. The last door on the left. Will opens it, pausing minutely, and allows Lucas in first with a mock-bow and a gesture. Light rains into the hall from the wide windows just beyond the vast conference table centered in the room. Blurred: Mason Verger's countenance. He is drenched in shadow at the height of the table, with people surrounding him in leather chairs, all of them quiet upon Lucas' entry. None Lucas recognizes save Artisyn.

            Her eyes widen, and she looks, of all things, angry. Yet she says nothing.

            "Look who showed up," a redhead girl says, sitting to Mason's left. Her hair is frizzed, bouncy. She looks bored, and past Lucas, as if he doesn't exist. "It's Mr. Wonderlate. Saw your review last night, babe."

            "Shut the fuck up," says a young man on the other side of the table – the only other male present. "You nosy bitch, why're you lookin at other people's reviews?"

            "It's a free country, Maculet, I can read what I want."

            A young Asian woman sitting to the redhead's right says, "You both have points. Frivolitee's a nosy bitch and it _is_ a free country." Lucas has seen her before, he realizes, though only through the portal of Instagram. She was sitting with Will in _Charity_ , sharing drinks.

            "Thanks, Blyss."

            "Fuck both of you, you know?"

            "Who's the stallion? Daddy, is he new?"

            The door comes to a soft close.

            Will walks past Lucas to sit at one of the nearest chairs. He falls into it easily, one elbow propping him up on the table. Lucas gently sits beside him.

            "God," says Artisyn, finally exhaling. "You guys are stupid. I told you about that Mickey who wrecked Wondermint's ratings. That's him."

            The redhead, who Lucas now knows as Frivolitee, peers closely. "That's him? You said he was just all right! He's better than all right!" When she looks at him, the last of the light burning in her hair, Lucas is struck to remember that she is who Noah often frequents. His favorite. Lucas tries to imagine them together. He finds it so easy – imagining. Right now, he could imagine a whole world, and with a little practice that world might become tangible and fierce. That world might exist.

            "Yeah," says Blyss. "Dust him off, you know. Get him out of those rags. He could make a hell of a stallion, huh, Daddy?"

            Mason shifts. The shadow that had seeped into him diminishes and Lucas feels less afraid when he can see the man's jovial eyes. "I'd never thought about that before. I'll give it some thought."

            "We're not hiring," says the woman next to him, who has yet to look at Lucas. She is nose-deep in her phone, her long hair over her shoulders.

            Mason waves a hand. "Never mind Margot, Mickey. She's hopped up on our budgeting."

            "Someone has to be."

            "Listen, Mickey. I'm not quite sure why you're here, but we need to have a little family _pow-wow_ so if you would be so kind as to, you know, leave, that'd be awesome."

            "Daddy, wait," Will says, hand falling from under his chin. He places it flat on the desk, fingers splayed out. Lucas looks at them. Those were his son's fingers. In the night, those belonged to his son. They were shorter, thinner, and when Will taps the desk heavily in an aggravated manner, Lucas cannot help but to remember the lightness with which they touched his own stomach. Lucas is jolted when Will continues: "I was hoping you'd hear him out. I mean, like–"

            "Wondermint, you and I are due for a little _chat_ ," Mason says and at the strangely stringent tone, the other whores lightly duck their heads. Only Margot, at his left, remains unfazed. "You're lucky you're allowed in here after the stunt you pulled last night. What was that, some rebellion? You're a little old for that, you know."

            "I wasn't rebelling! It had _everything_ to do with work!"

            Frivolitee looks as if she is ready to say something. She opens her mouth and Mason shoots her a look. She shuts it.

            Mason looks around at all present. He heaves a sigh. "Well, look. Right now, it doesn't matter why you were _completely negligent_ in your duties, Wondermint, because we aren't here to discuss that. I invited you five here – interloping Mickey not accounted for – because we're ready to begin our marketing campaign–"

            Will grips the edge of the table. "But that's what this is about!"

            "Wondermint, darling, if you interrupt me again, you're gonna have a hell of a work schedule coming up."

            Will pauses. He slowly releases the edge of the table and situates himself against the back of the chair. He looks across the table at Mason, who returns the stare. And after a long moment of silence, Mason groans aloud.

            "Fine, fine! What is it? What? What do you have to say? What is so goddamn important? Fill me in. I'm all ears. I might as well be."

            "I..." Will pauses, looks to Lucas. "I did it."

            "Did _what_?"

            Lucas catches Artisyn's stare. He cannot read it. He is jolted at his side by Will's bony elbow and suddenly realizes Will has been glaring at him. When Lucas looks down, to meet this glare, it changes. From icy insistence to something softer. Pleading, of all things. He thinks that's it. Looking up again, Lucas feels a heat come to his face. Everyone is looking at him. Even Margot, who has set her phone on the table. It blinks red. Lucas feels his own phone in his pocket, leaden.

            Lucas says, "I slept with him. I– that's where he was last night. With me. And I. I." He swallows down his native language which threatens him. "I know I cannot rescind the one star I gave before. Yet I would like to add a five to it. If that is... at all possible."

            The room is silent.

            Maculet, the other young man, looks thoughtful. "So..."

            "You didn't," Artisyn cries, her eyebrows tented upwards. "There's no way you fucked Wondermint, you're–"

            "I know what I am," Lucas says. The words like water in his throat. "And I know what I did."

            Will grins brightly in her direction. "Suck on that!"

            "You are such a fucking child," she shouts.

            "I'm a child? Who's the one pouting? You gonna cry, Artisyn? Are you?"

            "Shut up!"

            The two of them: they look similar, nearly like siblings. Lucas could see it, the similar dark hair, the doe eyes they share. Will grinning across the table at her and sticking his tongue out in the process, Artisyn puffing up by Margot's side, her eyes watering noticeably. Lucas is ready to leave. His body feels like sandbags on sticks, and he cannot stand the sight of these whores. Their airy faces, their bright eyes. It sickens something in him. He does not know why, but it does. Finally, Mason puts a stop to Will's merciless teasing before Artisyn does in fact break out into tears.

            "Like I was gonna say," he announces, hands spreading out before him, "we're here for a reason. And that has nothing to do with it – are you even aware how much a no-show damages our reputation? Strike that, of course you aren't."

            "But Daddy–"

            "I'm surprised you could be so reckless." His head lolls to the side, his eyes roll upwards. "Okay, never mind. I'm not. But I am surprised you're so stupid. I didn't see any order come in for you last night by him, meaning that fuck was off the clock. You no-showed to one, you were late to another. Those are _paying_ Mickeys, by the way, not some rando you've been alley-catting around with. At this point, can we even call him a Mickey? You don't get reviews from fucking your boyfriend. Goddammit, we've all gone over this. I'll never berate you for what you do on your free nights but that was company time. You shamed the _entire agency_ last night, Wondermint."

            At this, Lucas can feel Will stiffen beside him. Too, his breathing has changed. The smoothness of it is lost to time and to Mason, and in its place is a raggedness. Will is staring straight ahead.

            Mason continues: "Certainly glad our would-be stallion had a jolly good time but this is about mass marketing, and not one review." Lucas continually steals glances around the room, and most of the whores look bored as if they know what Mason will say. As if they have known for a long time. "And this just proves that I was right, as usual. We need someone with a steady reputation." He nods around the room. "Now, you fillies and colts were all plucked from the stables because you had the right looks. But I think we can all agree that Artisyn also has the right temperament. Really professional. Good job."

            Lucas wants to look at Will. And yet he doesn't. Artisyn seems to have enough grace to not grin over at him but she _is_ grinning, or smirking, behind a well-manicured hand. Frivolitee asks Mason about her work schedule this upcoming Friday.

 

*

 

"The thing is, it's totally creepy. Like more creepy than I'm used to. He's stopped ordering everyone else, I think. Have you seen him?"

            "Nah, not me. Wait, what's he look like?"

            "Uh, you know. Like a Mickey. Kinda grey, but not terrible looking. Not super different from Mr. Mickey here. White guy. Smells my hair a lot."

            "So, is he good?"

            "Not good or bad. Just, you know."

            "Yeah, I guess."

            "So what's the problem?"

            "It's not really a problem – I mean I don't mind regulars. That's job security right there."

            "Uh huh."

            "It's just the way he looks at me lately. And like, well, his apartment."

            "What about it?"

            "He used to have pretty nice stuff around. I remember, like, he had this one little Greek statue that used to be on his coffee table. I'd come in each time, like once a week, and see it. First time I showed up, I said, 'What a cute statue!' and he was all happy that I'd noticed it. He seemed to like it too. Anyway, last week I showed up and it was gone. Along with a lot of other stuff."

            "Pft. There it goes."

            "I know. It's too bad. Once they get to this point, it's only a matter of time until they can't afford you anymore."

            "Yeah. Kinda makes you think it really isn't job security."

            "Fuck that. It totally is. A Mickey is a Mickey is a Mickey. There's always someone to replace his broke ass."

            "You're a sugar-sweet saint, Maculet."

            "Is what it is. Anyway, should we be talking like this in front of the Mickey?"

            "That's not a Mickey, that's Wondermint's boyfriend. Daddy said so."

            "Daddy says a lot of things though..."

            "Hey, Mickey, what's your name?"

            Lucas frowns. He is sitting in the waiting room under the dim lights. The couch cushion beneath him is soft, giving, and across the room from the semi-circle desk. Abigail, quiet and bright-eyed, listens to the surrounding whores: Frivolitee, Blyss and Maculet. She looks up at them as if they were demigods walking the earth, idly picking flowers and deigning to entertain her with stories from the next realm. Lucas can only shake his head at this. Artisyn has long gone – she kissed Margot at the dissolving of the meeting and was rewarded with a pat on the head from Mason. Will is still in the conference room with Mason. He has been inside for twenty minutes, though it feels like hours to Lucas.

            Blyss waves her hand to dismiss his silence. "He's shy. Wondermint told me about him. He's got this thing about, like, personal privacy? Or something."

            "That's so cute."

            Maculet continues to eye Lucas from mussed hair to scuffed brown shoes. "So, hey, did Wondermint give you neck? He's so good at that."

            Frivolitee shrugs. "That's what I've heard but I don't believe it. He doesn't have the right mouth for it."

            "First off, fuck off, second off, who are you to talk with that paper cut mouth of yours?"

            " _You_ fuck off!"

            "No, you!"

            The sound of a door opening down the hall. Lucas rises to his feet and waits. The whores and the receptionist turn to look, falling silent as Will's footsteps rise in volume. He is finally visible around the side of the wall and looks at the room as everyone stares at him, wide-eyed and mute as woodland animals.

            Will says, "What the fuck're you guys staring at?"

            Slowly, they turn to look at each other and begin talking about conflicting schedules in low voices. Will walks quickly across the carpet. Lucas follows him, unsure of what else to do. He stands in the elevator, facing the closing doors, and as they shut completely, he finds that at his side Will is facing the glassed back of the elevator. He is looking out into the night with red-ringed eyes.

 

*

 

Lucas isn't sure what to say. He wants to know so many things. Yet he also wants to know nothing at all.

            The two of them sit in the Mercedes in front of the office building. The night is sparkling with artificial starlight. People walk along the sidewalk, unaware of who they pass. Lucas considers it for a long time. Who he is. Who Will is. Across the street and overtop of a brownstone is a large billboard. It advertises Givenchy clothing. Lucas imagines Artisyn's face there instead. Her dark hair, her shimmering eyes. Her red lips and soft skin. The lights under the billboard illuminating her white smile.

            When Lucas looks over at the driver's seat, he sees that Will is staring at the billboard as well. They have been sitting here for five minutes. Lucas takes in a deep breath and says, "Will," in a tentative voice.

            Will leans forward, forehead connecting with the steering wheel. His eyes close softly. He says, "It's hard to tell what it is about me that makes this stuff happen. I could blame you but what's the point." He pauses. "Get out, Lucas."

            "Will, I–"

            Will starts the car. He says, "Get out."

            Lucas presses his lips together. He nods, and removes his seatbelt. Halfway out of the car, feet on the concrete, he looks back. Will's eyes in the streetlight are dry and tired. Lucas steps out of the car and shuts the door. The Mercedes drives away and through the rear windshield, Lucas watches as Will's free hand rises into the darkness of his hair. He fists a few locks and tugs and tugs and tugs.

           

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy.


	13. Two Weeks

September 2nd and Boston Common is bursting with the newly kindled fires of autumn. Frog Pond is nearly deserted, whisper-silent; just an empty rippling pool around which walkers walk and joggers jog. In the winter it will freeze and skaters will glide just behind where Artisyn stands on the paved sidewalk amidst dun-colored cyclones of leaves. She stands in a skin-tight black dress that hems at mid-thigh and stilettos four inches tall. She looks precarious even as she stands perfectly still, glancing over one shoulder towards the photographer.

            When he clicks ten times over, thumb lightning-fast, he lowers the camera and Artisyn shivers immediately. Wraps thin fingers around her upper arms and looks farther off towards the benches where Mason and Margot Verger sit side-by-side.

            "Daddy," she cries, "it's so cold out here! Can't I have a sweater? Or something? I'm going to get the flu!"

            Mason doesn't look up from his phone. "Of course not, peaches. You know we need to see those nipple outlines."

            " _Mar_ got!"

            "Listen to your Daddy." Margot raises her phone into the mid-afternoon light. As Artisyn is directed by the photographer to make a three-quarter turn to her left, Margot readies the camera on her phone. She calls, "Artisyn, look here. This is going on your Twitter."

            Artisyn lowers her hands from her arms. There are goosebumps in their wake and wind tosses the thick tresses of her hair. Making the turn, she sends one eyebrow-raised look towards Margot's camera. She hears the tiny shutter click and Margot lowers the phone, returning to the void in the screen. On the bench, Margot and Mason look hardly like siblings. But it is in their manner. They text the very same way, moving their thumbs in a circular motion over the screens as they decide the next word. Artisyn now looks at the tops of their heads.

            The photographer says, "Artisyn, babe. Right here."

            She looks right here.

                       

*

 

It is midnight and the world is deep-skied. Frivolitee gazess straight up as if she could see through the thick black ceiling. The wind is threaded with chill, and she pulls a light shawl closer over her bare shoulders as she exits her pink Jaguar. Over the concrete, up the brownstone steps in the heart of Allston. She's done this many times before.

            In the small vestibule, lit softly with a blinking light above, she buzzes for 3B. Singing into the mouthpiece: "It's me!"

            The door opens without a word. Up the first flight of stairs, the warmth of the hall allowing her shawl to sag to the joints of her elbows. Her black leather satchel taps repeatedly against the side of her right thigh. Her heel clicks muffled on the carpet. The door in front of her, on which she taps her knuckles in rhythm of the syllables: _it is me. fri-vol-i-tee._

            Mickey opens the door. He has looked tired of late, continually, and in a different way. The exhaustion goes deeper. It reaches even his feet. He treads the ground in quite a different way. He allows her entry and she looks to see the empty spot on the coffee table where the little statue has gone. A painting which hung over the couch, a replica of a van Gogh's _Sunflowers_ , is also missing. Frivolitee never knew how many of these paintings there were, how many different _Sunflowers_. Just that Mickey had said many. He'd said he liked this one. And now it is gone.

            But she is here.

            She turns to him, his tired eyes, his welcoming arms. She pretends not to notice any of it. Cants her head, clasps her hands behind her back and looks at him in that way she knows he is now unable to live without. "Well," she says, "what shall we do tonight?"

 

*

 

The fervent thud of bass. A melody obscured by high-pitched screams. In _Charity_ , in the purple and golden strobe from the illumined dance floor, Maculet sits at a small two-seat table near a corner. The tables surrounding are filled with mixed company: Mickeys he knows, whores he doesn't. Drinks left unaccounted for, pushed aside by idle fingertips. Men stare at them with ill-intent and women drink them in unawares. They fizz and bubble with orange rinds and olives. Maculet leans his chair back on its hind legs and texts with one hand on the table.

            "Anything?"

            He looks up at Blyss' arrival. She wears all white, her hair back with an orchid clip. An appletini is set in front of him, and she keeps the mimosa for herself.

            Maculet groans, tossing his phone to the table's glassed middle. Over the bass resounding, he shouts, "Nothing! It's like he's dropped off the face of the fucking planet. He hasn't updated his Twitter or anything. It's been two weeks."

            "Exactly, which is why you need to text him and tell him he's being a huge baby! Get him to have a drink with us! He'll feel better, I bet."

            "I did," he says, taking down his drink in one large gulp. He shakes his head and sets it with a wet clink beside his phone. "Like _ten_ times. He's gotta get over it. He's gonna ruin his ratings if he's being emo with Mickeys."

            "You think he is?"

            "His reviews aren't so bad. They're fours and fives. Daddy's been working him pretty hard though. Heard from Abigail he hasn't had a night off since the meeting we had. And, you know, the whole discount thing. No telling what kind of houses he’s been in."

            Blyss pulls a grim face. "God, my pussy hurts just thinking about it."

            "Gross. I don't wanna hear about that."

            "Pft. Prude."

            "Bitch."

            "Bastard."

            "Cunt."

            Blyss takes a long sip of her mimosa. She looks out across the dance floor which pulses and throbs like something living. "I wish he'd just get over it. What's the big deal? So Artisyn got the campaign, so what."

            "Yeah, well. He's never been all that professional."

 

*

 

                        Lucas

                                    Are you all right?

 

            Will looks at it from time to time. The text was sent nearly ten days ago, four days after they last saw each other. Sitting in the car just outside Deep Sugar's office building. Then, Lucas on the sidewalk and Will rolling away into the traffic. He looks down at the message, at his lit phone screen on the counter. The apartment around him is silent, the television in the living area on and muted. Recessed lighting dim overhead.

            He sighs heavily. Pushes the prongs of his fork around on the half-empty plate before him. Indian takeout from two days prior. Basmati rice exiled to the edges of the plate and ripped pieces of naan like fallen flower petals in the middle. He drops the fork, the metal clink too loud, and grabs the phone. He types: _fuck off_

            Then he erases it.

            He types: _u ruined my life_

            Then he erases it.

            He glares down at the screen, those static words. Lucas has not said anything since these words. And Will has opened this message too many times to count. Once, upon receiving it, he typed out two long paragraphs of pure rage. He fell asleep, red-eyed and with Artisyn's face in his head, and when he woke, he deleted it all. Since then, he cannot remember what he said. He wishes he could. But he can't. So he lowers the phone, blackening it. He leans back on the small stool where he sits at the bar connecting the counter and spacious living area. The windows wide open, staring down into the city that is merely hours from waking. The sun will rise soon. He looks towards the dim spire which is the Millennium Tower.

 

*

 

Lucas looks out into the midday cool of a young autumn. Through the windowpane, under the half-drawn blinds, he stares at the Millennium Tower which looms over Downtown Crossing. In the crisp sunlight, it gleams something brilliant. Its shine reflected in Lucas' dull hazel eyes. He touches the corner of his mouth with the rough pad of a thumb, his chin settled into his fleshy palm. The Formica under his elbow is hard and smells of Pinesol from the cleaning crew. The entire building reeks of it. New interim, new season, and gone are the wisps of summer and the smells of light perspiration and dust. Every step Lucas has taken within the last two weeks has been into a different world, as if through a portal. He cannot say that he likes it or that he does not. It has been eons since he has liked anything at all.

            He feels rotten inside.

            "Professor?"

            Lucas jolts. He turns to face the class – his new wards with whom he will spend the fall semester. Their faces are ghostlike to him, each a will-o’-the-wisp seen on a fogged horizon. If he has seen them passing in the halls, it was never clear. When he sees them later in the week, it will still not be. He won't attempt remembering their names. It isn't important.

            "Right," he says, standing from the desk. "Now..."

           

*

 

Where once office hours were, for Lucas, an empty space in which he could grade or drink coffee in peace, he finds now they are inundated with student meetings. The provost had made his intentions clear in the faculty meeting that they were to be more hands-on with the undergrads, as collectively the ratings for professors were falling in the category of specialized attention for such a small and privatized university. Lucas found himself out of the loop with such things. In the Rosalie Building presently, in his burrow-like office, he sits behind his desk across from a student who speaks in hiccupped phrases. She takes Persuasive Writing for her general education requirements. She says she dreams of being a politician.

            Lucas looks into her blue eyes, then through them. The lens and retina, into her skull and brain matter. And with a push, he is out of the office, out of the building, out of the confines of reality and into the time-worn matter of memory. Two weeks and a night ago, he stood in another world. A world that had been forbidden to him for so long. A world he was never even sure existed. Yet it was brought to him. He was coaxed into it. He has not forgotten. Those long days ago, he has felt the tap of feather-light fingertips on his chest, in the curled and coarse hair there. He felt the heat and pressure of a body around him. He heard the high-pitched sigh.

            _Where you're so deep you never quite come back out again._

            Lucas' hand slides from the cool desktop to his jeans. The rough fabric there.

            _I could be your dreamscape._

            He touches the hard rectangular device through the denim.

            _You could stay there. You could live there._

            Lucas' eyelashes flutter.

            _If you wanted._

            The girl looks around the room. Her bright blue eyes are nothing like his son's – in neither the light nor the dark. Yet they take him there anyway. Everything takes him there anyway. She says, "Sure is barren in here, professor."

            Lucas says, "Yes. Utter desolation."

            She smiles, of all things.

           

*

 

Not a word.

            Not a phrase or an emoticon, those tiny little clusters of punctuation which Lucas had to discover on his own were to be viewed by tilting his head to the side. He'd never gotten them previously. He's checked on Will's Twitter, his Instagram, and he sent him a text four days after the incident at the office. Will never responded.

            Lucas has felt slightly out of sorts – he doesn't care about the lack of response. His own son, when soundly embarrassed or ashamed, had often refused to speak to Kirsten or Lucas for a time. He would lock himself in his room or run out of the house into the woods – an abandoned old treehouse not belonging to any particular family was his home away from home. He would return eventually, never in time for dinner but certainly in time for dessert. And all the while, Lucas would be safe in the knowledge that the boy was never hurt enough to not talk to his toys he took out there with him or imaginary legions which he led through battle. He could be heard through the echoing woods, shouting orders and demands. Lucas remembers standing in the backdoor archway, looking out into the fogged trees and hearing. And smiling.

            Will's Twitter and Instagram, Lucas thinks, are much like the boy's imaginary friends. As long as he speaks to them, yells outrage to them, he is truly fine. A bruised ego, but he would always return with splinters in his toes and a dirty nose. Slightly out of breath and smelling of the woods. He would place his arms around Lucas' neck and mutter that he was ready for ice cream.

            The only thing that continues to update is Will's live-feed reviews. Every night, like clockwork, Mickeys check in to announce Will's performance. Fives, mostly, a few fours here and there. Mickeys remarking on how stunning an actor Will is; how dedicated.

            Yes, Lucas is aware.

            He is also aware that Will has not had a night off since that day. It does not stop him, at 9:03 PM this night, from making an order for him. The price was marked down by half. He lies in bed and waits. The apartment around him a shabby undoing of whatever livelihood he has tried to make for himself here. One of the floor lamp's three bulbs is shot, and the room is a third in dark. Clothes, clean and dirty, strewn along the floor like flowerbeds trampled in rain. Bags of take-out and empty brown bottles of beer line the perimeter of the room, and a few sit on the bathroom sink. The kitchenette trash is overflowing with old popcorn bags and half-eaten muffins from the shop down the street. There is sweat forming on his forehead, in the little divots of skin near his temples.

            It takes nearly thirty minutes, and he thought he could stand it no longer a week ago. Days ago. Hours ago. When the girl was in his office and the phone was in his pocket and his son was in his head, bright and terrible as a meteor hurdling towards earth; inescapable.

            There's a knock on the door. Blunt rapping of the knuckles.            

            In his jeans and cotton undershirt, Lucas heaves himself from the bed. He crosses the carpet, nearly tripping on a light coat. He opens the door, and when he sees Will, he isn't sure what kind of greeting would be appropriate. Much like on the first night, he says nothing at all. Simply takes stock of Will as he is: standing with curls finely brushed, green eyes burning like streetlights in the rain. He is dressed in dark jeans and a sea-blue button-up, thick of material for the cooling temperatures. His satchel tight across his chest.

            Will gives Lucas a look he cannot discern. He enters the apartment easily, walking around Lucas. Lucas shuts the door.

            He is turned and looking at the apartment. With Will here, the room seems three times as small. He says, without looking back, "I didn't respond to your text, so you ordered me here. Pretty smart. Wouldn't have thought you'd try that."

            "I did not order you for–"

            "Oh, I know what you ordered me for," Will says, twirling freshly on a heel. His curls bounce with the newness of some product.

            Lucas doesn't say anything for a long moment. Will eyes him lightly, then raises his wrist to look at the silver watch hanging there.

            "You have fifty-seven minutes left."

            "Will–"

            " _No_. I'm not _Will_ right now."

            Lucas rubs his thumb against the side of his pointer finger. "Wondermint."

            "Yeah. And you are?"

            "M-Mickey."

            Will crosses the space between them with two sure steps. He holds one hand to Lucas' face, caressing softly his stubbled jawline. The other hand falls to Lucas' belt and with spider-quick fingers, he undoes the buckle. "I am Wondermint," he says, maintaining a fervent green eye-contact. "And I–" He roughly unzips the jeans, and places the flat of his palm deep into the plaid boxers there, flush against heated and quickly hardening flesh. "–will do _any_ thing Mickey says."

            Lucas exhales a startled deep breath.

            Will leans in minutely. Nips at Lucas' chin and whispers, "Say."

 

*

 

The boy continuously sighs and it sounds, strangely, song-like. Melodious, and though he is directly beneath Lucas, it seems far away. As if over the roar of the ocean. As if through the silken insides of a pink shell. The undulations of the noises reverberate through Lucas' body, his case which shields him from boring into the boy completely. When he presses in, that quick thrust inward, there is some trick going on, something that tells him finally _yes this here you can be one here_. And, instinctually, he retreats. Then returns. That ongoing hell which shimmers like a heaven. Lucas cannot tell the difference between the two.

            " _Far_ ," the boy says, gasps, with the side of his face plastered to the bed, his back finely arched with the aid of a pillow under his groin. " _Far_."

            Lucas drives into him. His body coated in sweat, the boy coated in sweat. The boy's soft hair bouncing with fragrance against Lucas' clenched and bared teeth. Lucas' large hands holding tight to those breakable wrists. Like porcelain. Like glass. His whole being something Lucas could shatter with one correctly positioned thrust. He groans into the boy's neck, that slender thing, and grabs at his hips, hoisting him back on his knees.

            The boy makes a startled sound, and he is all limbs, confused limbs. Lucas sits back on his heels, pulling the boy into his lap. He grips him tightly, surely, across the birdlike chest and clasping a bony shoulder. Lucas drives upwards into him, despite his cries, or because of them. The boy struggles, his thin voicing falling into the darkness of the room, eaten up by it. Just that raw sound emitted from his throat and Lucas is eaten up too. His hips stutter, still, quake. He spills himself into the boy.          

            The room quiets. Nothing but deep, pained panting from Lucas. A bone-deep tiredness settles into him, and he rubs his forehead solemnly against the boy's shoulder blade as it becomes Will's shoulder blade, the illusion shattering as he softens. Will's breathing is slightly halted with what sounds like him pressing his lips together or licking them. He mutters, "Mickey?"

            Lucas releases his tight hold. He quietly adjusts himself, helps to adjust Will, so that their de-joining does not pull at the condom overmuch. When Will is separated from him, there is a slick popping sound. Lucas looks down into his lap which he can only barely see – the lights are all out and his glasses sit nicely folded on the nightstand. He peels the wet condom from himself, ties it, and tosses it onto the floor. It lands in the dark mounds of their clothes, and Will's open leather satchel which Lucas has found is filled with all manner of condoms and lubricant. Lucas is staring down at it when he hears Will's throat-clear. Lucas glances up to see Will reclined back against the pillows. He cannot make out his expression or anything beyond the long lines of his body.

            "What?" Lucas asks.

            "Nothing. I can't clear my throat?" Will does it again. "My voice usually doesn't go that high."

            Lucas wipes the sweat from his face. He feels something in the pit of his stomach, which is heavy and unwelcome as an oil-laden meal. But there is satisfaction there too. He thinks. He moves the bangs from his eyes and says, "Thank you."

            "Don't _thank_ me. You're paying for this, you know." There is a jingling sound – Will looking at his watch. He moves, legs swinging over the side of the bed. "I gotta be out of here in three minutes. Can you get the light?"

            Lucas gets the light. He and Will dress in near silence, and Lucas tries not to look at him, but finds he cannot help it. He glances at Will's long marble back, the knots of his spine as he bends to leg on his jeans. The slight bob of his pink-flushed skin which is still half-hard and unsatisfied. Lucas touched those spaces, but it was not Will he touched.

            _He is a great actor_ , Lucas thinks as he ushers Will to the door. Again, he is coiffed and only slightly apple-red in his cheeks. He looks like a gift barely opened.

            Will straightens his posture. "It was nice spending time with you, Mickey. I hope you enjoyed yourself."

            "So this is an appointment," Lucas says.

            "This is an appointment." Will turns out of the open door. Lucas grabs his wrist and when Will turns easily back, Lucas does not know what he wants to say. Will searches him, one eyebrow raised. He says, "When I'm off work, I'm no longer Wondermint. If you want to talk to Will, you'll have to wait."

            Lucas says nothing still.

            Will groans and yanks his hand away. As he is walking down the hall, he calls back, "3 AM, Mickey." He descends the stairwell. And Lucas begins waiting for 3 AM.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, what are you willing to do? Tell me what you're willing to do.


	14. Discount Bin

                        Will

                                    fucking u in ur place was just as depressing as i always thot it wud b

                                    stop ignoring me

                                    u wanted 2 talk 2 me

                                    so talk

                        Me

                                    I'm not sure what I'm meant to say to that.

                        Will

                                    whatever

                        Me

                                    You never answered my message. Are you all right?

                        Will

                                    what do u think???

                        Me

                                    I don't know.

                        Will

                                    & y do u even care?

                        Me

                                    You've stalked me for a month. You've dragged me through your debacle.

                                    I would think I have a right to know about the outcome.

                        Will

                                    u were there 4 the outcome idiot

                                    daddy's been working me to the fucking bone

                                    he put me on discount!!

                                    50 goddamn % off

                                    THEN EVERYONE WITH A NICKEL ORDERED ME

                                    4 a goddamn bargain

                                    including u

                        Me

                                    I didn’t mean for it to come across that way.

                        Will

                                    i bet

                                    i kno ur poor af

                                    cant resist a fuckin deal

                                    mickey wants what mickey wants

                                    & u kno what?

                        Me

                                    What?

                        Will

                                    u fuck pretty good

                                    don't stop replying asshole

                                    u won't ever get many compliments from me

                        Me

                                    I don't know what to say.

                        Will

                                    i'd probably enjoy it if u weren't such a total foal freak

                        Me

                                    Okay.

                        Will

                                    ive been thinking about this

                                    about u

                                    its better ur taking this out on me than some foal

                                    u kno?

                        Me

                                    I know.

                        Will

                                    but i just can't do it at ur house

                                    lol i'll get so depressed i’ll kill myself or something

                                    it smells terrible

                        Me

                                    Are you proposing something?

                        Will

                                    yea

 

*

 

It barely takes any cajoling for Lucas to agree – though he is marginally aware that he does not have to agree to any mitigation on Will's part. What Will offers is no ease for Lucas, merely work. But Lucas agrees nonetheless, and some might say in earnest. For, does he not deserve, at the very least, to work for this deranged dreamscape he has somehow managed to till? He thinks he does. It is the world's smallest retribution, but Lucas is taking what he can get.

            Sleep isn't something he is overly concerned with, anymore. He gets it when and where he can, mainly in the small spaces allowed to him in the Rosalie Building. Students come and go, spending minutes with him that feel like hours. He has a few ambitious ones in his crop this term and their eager faces draw up the likeness of Artisyn, her glow-dark eyes fervent in the face of victory.

Lucas has rarely seen Noah of late, though, like a spiritual presence, he feels him within the confines of the building. Doors down and caged, as Lucas is. Lucas waits, sometimes, for Noah to show his face and yet he never does – on a rare occasion, he has seen the man's shirt sleeve or the wingtip of a shoe, just around the corner. Lucas has raised his hand in greeting but has not received any acknowledgement. Not unfriendly in nature but simply blankness, as if they exist on two different planes.

            _If only he knew_ , Lucas thinks. _We are on the same plane, finally._

            On Thursday, his class runs from 4 to 6 PM. The wide valley of the room, prickled and spotted with too-young faces; pockmarked and acne-scarred, some brilliant and beautiful, most dull. Lucas speaks on autopilot. The day outside moves from midafternoon into evening, and stars prickle pale blue in the east. The sun is behind the building and a calm light filters into the windows, half-illuminating the students' faces.

            Lucas feels an insistent vibration at his thigh.

            He moves from standing to sitting, half a leg off the swivel chair behind the desk. The students continue looking at the example he has scribbled on the whiteboard. Over top of his glasses, he peers at them, then slides the phone out into his warm palm.

 

                        Will

                                    wanna order me at 2 2nite?

 

                        Me

                                    Yes.

           

            Lucas, foolishly, thinks that is to be the end of it. On and off, Will has nights where he is not completely booked. He informs Lucas, then Lucas makes the order. He tries not to think of his depleting checking account as he does so. He tries to think of it as shopping in the bargain bin; there is always a deal to be made there. In fact, he consoles himself, it would be a waste to not take advantage of such deals. That would be the true waste of money. However, just as Lucas goes to slide the phone back into his pocket, it vibrates again.

 

                        Will

                                    how do u want it?

 

            Lucas looks up at his class. They are like sheep: complacent and placid at a distance. They only need a shepherd to keep them from roaming the moors. He glances back down.

           

                        Me

                                    What do you mean?

                        Will

                                    i cud b waiting 4 u

                                    what position do u want me in?

                                    do u wanna fuck me on my knees?

                                    do u want me on top?

                                    do u want me on my back??

                        Me

                                    You would wait for me like that?

                                    In whatever position I chose?

                        Will

                                    yea

                        Me

                                    Why?

                        Will

                                    last Mickey of the nite

                                    might as well have sum fun

 

            "Professor? Could you explain the–"

            Lucas nearly drops the phone. He looks up, at the sea of students who are staring at him. The girl who speaks, hand raised, is holding onto her raised wrist with the other. She wears a look between patience and impatience. Lucas feels heat in his face.

            He says, "Just a moment. I have to take this." He leaves the room with quick, sure steps across the flat carpet. Out in the empty hall, he hears the small buzz of their confused conversations. When he reinters the room, he will tell them it was a family emergency. He will tell them it was about his son.

 

                        Me

                                    Your back.

 

*

 

He sees it for the first time on his way home from Chinatown. Sitting in the sunset light streaming in through the windows; the train car rolling from the underground to above. And a heavyset woman standing directly in front of Lucas' seat moves when they meet the Maverick stop. Lucas looks up at the glossed ad she had covered and sees something he has half been waiting to see. Artisyn's face, her bedroom eyes half-lidden in the autumn-strewn Common. Lucas can see the very tip of Charm Ridge just over her shoulder and the red-and-orange dappled trees sheltering it. It's like some great joke. The slope of her white shoulder, the barest outline of her nipple beneath a soft fabric. And the words in a slanted cursive, only barely visible, at the bottom: _Mickey wants what Mickey wants._

            Even lower than that, and off to the side of the ad, is the small link for the website, along with an official Twitter beneath. Lucas looks at it in something like a stupor. A few other passengers notice as well, and some of the younger adults snap pictures with their phones. The tiny clicks of automatic shutters. A few forget to turn off the flash.

            Lucas knows how it works. He sits there, hands clasped between his knees, and watches as they type furiously. These pictures will soon be on their own Twitters and Instagrams and sent to friends and friends of friends. They are, all of them, connected. Lucas looks again into Artisyn's deep eyes. Would this have been good for Will? Though he has _wanted_ it so, would it have been _good_ for him?

            Lucas cannot say. He only knows that sometimes it isn't good to get what he wants. He has known that, and he has run from what he wanted. What he wanted with all of his heart.

            A shadow of it has found him, anyway.

 

*

 

" _Far_ ," the boy says through a half-kiss. It's terribly wet and sloppy, nothing that would even resemble a proper kiss between adults. His mouth is just open, slack, and Lucas drives into it, taking it by way of a rough tongue-fucking, a likeness of how he takes the rest of him. The bed, wide and soft, shakes beneath them with the force of Lucas' downward motions. The boy moans again, fervently, and tinged with pain. Lucas has him spread, has forced the boy to help him in this. His tiny hands gripping the sweat-marked underside of his own knees, pulling them up to his chest. Lucas has full access. His arms, holding him up and strong, feel like rotted pylons he depends on. If he were of a mind, any at all, he would lie down and move slowly, intently, to make it last longer.

            The only thing running in the back of his subconscious is that nothing lasts. Thus, he makes the most of it.

            The boy is moaning something, though Lucas isn't sure what. He can't hear any proper words, just half-syllables and ghosts of words that slip out between their twined tongues. Lucas shoves down in a particular angle, moving his head into the crook of the boy's neck. His hair, his scalp, smells as if it hasn't been washed for a few days. That raw scent is intoxicating. Lucas remembers it from tussles in the woods. From stolen hugs and lingering kisses in the halls of their home, when Kirsten was just a floor down and humming a lullaby to the dog.

            The boy says, so soft and sweet, "I want it, _Far_ , let me have it, let me h- _have_ it..."

            Lucas comes. It's pulled from him so harshly that he turns and bites to stifle any oncoming groan. He holds his teeth in the boy's stiffened neck and grinds slowly into that heat, churning his orgasm out in a lazy, rough undulation. The boy's moans have turned, so easily, from high to low and Will is struggling, pushing up slightly into Lucas' motion. Lucas has his sweat in his mouth. Soon, he releases his hold and swallows and lies limp on top of Will. They both pant lightly in the darkened high-rise bedroom, with the moon peering in at them.

            Lucas returns to himself quickly. He often realizes seconds after his orgasm that this is not his lovechild but the strange whore who is on discount from a website and these rushing notions fill him with some disdain for both he and Will. He rises back a bit, taking care to remove himself with the condom attached. Will makes a sound and releases his hold on his own bent legs, allowing them to flop down against the mattress.

            On his knees, Lucas rolls the condom off. He is looking outside at the still moving night. The room is quiet, and they are too far above the street to hear the cars, the people, the raucousness which is inherent to inner Boston.

            "You go through a lot just to get this, you know," Will says. "Coming here in the middle of the night. Leaving, going to work and stuff."

            Lucas turns to look at him, barely visible in the moonlight. The marble lines of his body, slick with sweat, and his hand moving along himself, pumping idly. He is flushed red and lightly leaking against his flat stomach. It glistens on his fingertips.

            Lucas says, "I cannot help myself."

            "Does it really work? You feel like you're–" Will angles his legs a bit, continues his simple motion. "Like you're fucking him?"

            He tries not to wince at the word. He can no longer deny what he wants. This is a solemn, quiet place. Truth should be allowed between a Mickey and a whore. The only place it should be allowed, perhaps.

            "It does. Not that I'd know."

            "So you really never did?"

            "I never did."

            "Then why did–" He sighs, a contented sound. "How did your wife–"

            "She saw something she shouldn't have. That's it."

            Lucas ties the condom. Will strokes himself until he finally comes, with little more than a shudder and an arched back against the downy pillows. When his stomach is sticky-white, and he is lying there as limp as a fish, Lucas clears his throat.

            Will eyes him. "What?"

            "Nothing," Lucas says. "I cannot clear my throat?"

            " _Fun_ ny."

            "Wondermint, I–"

            Will raises his slick hand. He looks at the watch dangling there on his wrist. "I'm Will now. You're Lucas now."

            "Right." He lets that sink in. He always forgets the time. "You know, you are a good actor. I don't think... I don't think just anyone could do this for me." He feels like Will is looking at him, but it's hard to tell in half-dark. "I thought about getting someone different. But."

            "It's weird, isn't it? I spent all that time chasing you. And now you come here eagerly."

            "I didn't know."

            "I tried to tell you."

            Lucas nods. Leaves the bed and, as per usual, drops the condom into the bathroom trash. He looks down at it, that which shielded him thinly from Will, and sees how it is completely filled with his own semen. He always comes that much. As if he has been denied sex for decades. He supposes in some way he's never really had it. Lucas urinates into the porcelain toilet and he thinks about all the times he has tried it: from being young and making stilted motions with children his own age, to being a confused high schooler and making frequent trips to the elementary school at lunchtime, just to watch the young ones play. He remembers those high-winded days, and the screeches of the children on the monkey bars, the yellow plastic slide. Lucas looked at them strangely then and thought, _I am like you. I must be._

            When he leaves the bathroom, Will is already dressed in pajamas. He is eating Doritos, drinking that beer he loves, and slouching on the living room couch while the television blares nonsense at him. Lucas dresses, and moves to the front door.

            "You wanna stay over?" Will asks, staring at the screen. He speaks over a mouthful of chips. "There's a _Hoarders_ marathon on."

            "I don't know what that is."

            "You could find out, dope."

            Lucas shakes his head. He bids Will goodnight and Will snorts and grunts at him. When he is downstairs, and out on the fall fresh street, he shivers. His sweater is on Will's bedroom floor.

 

*

 

It darkens earlier. Lucas can see the hem of the night between quickly thinning boughs. There is a window out at the end of the corridor in the Rosalie Building, near the small nook complete with coffee pot and microwave. The sound of his coffee warming in the old mug simmers behind him, and Lucas stares out into the Common. Distantly, there are soft sounds of conversation; other adjuncts speaking with bright-eyed students. Typing. The soft sound of a copier warming paper and spilling black ink.

            “Lucas.”

            Lucas jolts. He turns in time for the microwave to ding. He usually tries to catch it before the last second. He has worried about being too loud lately – the entire building, no, the entire world seems quieter. It’s as if he stomps through it.

            Noah is there, standing beside the counter, hip lightly cocked against it. His mug in hand. Chicken declaring fiercely: _Eat more veggie soup!_ Looking up, Lucas took notice of Noah’s _state_ – the only apt way Lucas can describe him. He looks dead; deep rings around his eyes, a gauntness to his face that had not been there two weeks prior, a week prior. His clothes hung slightly loose on him, as if he’s lost ten pounds, or more. His facial hair overgrown, like an untended lawn before an abandoned house.

            _Abandoned, that’s the word_ , Lucas thinks.

            “I’ve been meaning to say hi,” Noah says, and makes an attempt at a smile. “Sorry.”

            “No, I… I have been meaning to as well.”

            Lucas looks at the microwave. He opens it, retrieves his lukewarm coffee. Noah catches the handle and slides his in. Sets it to a minute.

            “Have you… have you been all right?”

            “Oh, fine,” Noah says.

            Lucas eyes him. “Yes?”

            “Sure, brother. How’s the semester treating you? These office hours are nuts, huh?”

            “Mm. I find myself losing interest in the students,” he says, lowering his voice. Often adjuncts keep their doors open. Students roam the halls, looking like apparitions between worlds. He looks at Noah again, and the storm in his eyes is a thunderhead. “Noah–”

            “Have you seen?” he asks, looking past Lucas, out of the window. “They started concrete ads last week.”

            “Yes.”

            “They used Artisyn. I guess it figures they would.”

            “Yes.”

            “Still…” The microwave dings and Noah jolts lightly. He does not look at it. “I think I know someone who deserved it more. Reviews or not, you know?”

            Lucas nods. His coffee is cold in his grasp, startlingly so. As if the winter had conquered the autumn, rushed through it, and into Lucas’ hand. When Noah takes his own mug from the microwave and looks down into the murky brown liquid, he smiles at it. Or it must be intended to be a smile. Lucas remembers the conversation the whores were having in the office lobby, amongst each other. He doesn’t know what to say, or if he can say anything at all. The only thing in his mind, on loop, is: _Is this what you wanted?_

            Instead, he says, “Is everything all right, Noah?”

            Noah waves at him lightly; as if he is miles away, on a distant shore. “Sure, of course,” he says. He raises the cup like a toast and Lucas returns the gesture on instinct. Noah walks away, shoes softly gliding over the dingy carpet. He diminishes down the hall as students come up from the stairwell, and they cover him, until there is nothing left.

 

*

 

He’s begun again. Lucas feels as if it has been an eternity, but in actuality, it has been a month.

            In the late afternoon on a smog-misted street in Downtown Crossing, Lucas walks with a small bag from Marshall’s. He went in search of another sweater – his moss green one, woolen and warm, is in Will’s apartment and Lucas feels that things lost to Will might as well have been thrown into a gorge. Yet even their cheapest sweaters were more than Lucas can currently afford. He looked at his bank account this morning and felt a hole in his stomach. The bag he carries through the streets is filled with a small package of socks, which were on discount.

            As he walks, he looks through his phone. He has been checking Will’s online accounts regularly since the Deep Sugar meeting a month ago. Now, finally, on the soft blue of his Twitter page, is a lone tweet, that which hails his reprisal.

           

            Will Graham @Wonderm1nt – Sept 7

            finally off scolding #fullprice

 

            Lucas cannot help but feel disappointed. He looks at the bag in his hand as he stands at a red-lit crosswalk, inundated with others who smell heavily of marijuana and coffee. Lucas gazes up at the frosted grey sky and shivers with the wind blowing through his flannel. As the light changes and people move around him, pushing ever onward, Lucas feels his phone vibrate wildly and flood his surrounding area with an electronic jingle. He is pushed along, across the street in front of revving engines, and he looks at the Unidentified Caller notice popping up. He has never had one before. For all he knows, it could be Will.

            He presses it to his ear. “Yes?”

            The voice, now, shocks him to stillness. Yes, in the middle of the street as the light turns green, and cars blare at him. Even over this he hears it, that tone locked in puberty and bobbing with unsureness. The way he says it nearly brings Lucas to his knees, to tears.

            “ _Far_?”

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts appreciated!


	15. Loved 1s

He doesn't know what to say, at first. So he just listens.

            He listens to the boy's worry-roughened voice. It sounds different than it did just seven months ago. He sounds older, and Lucas wishes he could see him right now. Suddenly, and so precisely, that need is planted at the forefront of his mind and, without the means to make it happen, he uses his imagination. Here, on this garbage-scented street in the middle of Downtown Crossing, where Lucas nearly dropped his bag in the street, where people walk around him like sharks and other hungry sea-dwellers, unaware. Lucas looks across from him and slightly down, as if the boy stands before him. Those candy-pink lips moving in time with these words in Lucas' ear. Those sun-brightened eyes. The easy toss of his hair and the freckles that now fade with age along his arms and the bridge of his nose.

            He listens to the boy say how he has missed his _Far_. How he went back and forth in his head, trying to decide when and where and how and why this happened. He says he does not remember much of what happened that night.

            _No_ , Lucas thinks but does not say. _You would not._

            All he knows, the boy says, is that his father is gone and they live in a new, smaller house. He found the address Lucas left for him under his pillow, and he sent the phone. But – he adds, voice wobbling now – he did not know if he should call.

            You gave yourself the key, Lucas says.

            I needed the key, he says.

            You're a smart boy.

            Why did you go? Have you done something terrible? _Mor_ has not said. Only that...

            Only... that?

            Only that you are a terrible _Far_. That I deserve better.

            Lucas cannot help the chill that blows through him. He is jostled on the street until he is pushed up against a building, and quickly he slips in between two stone structures. He looks out onto the brick laid street, at the people there, like a monster from a dank alley.

            She's right, he says into the phone. His stomach is aflutter at the sound of the boy's sigh. I love you, he says, but you deserve better.

            There is silence for a long moment. The boy is wont to do this – wait his father out, knowing his own advantage. He has always known, some part of Lucas thinks. Oh, he has always known. Those furtive little glances one would assume from a child never came from Lucas' son. Only boldness, a wildness with Lucas' attention, so assured in the knowledge that he would always have it. So assured in the knowledge that Lucas never wanted to give it to anyone else. He had him from birth and, even as a wet infant, knew it. He knew every step of the way. He had to, hadn't he? How could he not know? For that matter, how could Kirsten? Lucas tried to hide it, for twelve years tried to hide it. But you cannot hide the prints of perspiration. And trying to only makes you sweat more.

            Lucas knows this.

            Finally, the boy says, I miss you, _Far_. Families aren't supposed to live apart. Are they?

            The phone clicks before Lucas can respond. He pulls it away from his ear – torrentially pockmarked with sweat – and looks at the blackened screen. He stares at it for a long time and the sweat in his palm at once becomes too much and takes him by surprise: he drops the phone to the ground and he watches as hairline fractures creak out from the middle like a spider's web.

 

*

 

The apartment seems different when he re-enters. Almost like it doesn't really belong to him, and, of course, it's true. He's always thought so – eons before moving to Boston. Renting isn't owning. He doesn't feel like much of a man doing it. He doesn't feel like much of a man.

            Lucas sets his small bag down on the floor somewhere, amidst the rising mountains of dirty clothes. He isn't overly concerned with finding it again.

            Sitting on the bed, the creaky mattress groaning for his weight, he looks around the small apartment and he sees his life in each bit of old furniture, in each stain on the wall, in each bit of trash on the floor. It's been a week since he has made the trek to the dumpster out between the buildings. It's been longer since he has been to a proper grocery store – he no longer has time for such things. Between reinforced office hours and classes and meeting with Will, he can barely find time for sleep, let alone such luxuries as food. He has long since stopped listening to the rumble of his stomach. Coffee tamps it down, some.

            The phone in his hand. It still works. The crack is superficial, and doesn't mean anything. Yet he feels it as if one of his own organs had dropped and fissured. The sleek black body turning over in his hand. His own distorted image in the screen. He can recognize himself more clearly this way, he thinks. And he could recognize it clearly when he saw his son being taken away. His small face through the back windshield of Kirsten's parents' Jeep. The way it bounced over the uneven road leading away from their country home. His son looking at him with those eyes, those leaking dove eyes, and Kirsten off somewhere beyond the property, crying in the dirt.

            Who did he inherit those eyes from? Who?

            They are not Lucas'. They are not Kirsten’s. Who gave the boy such an unfair and ancient power in those gemlike eyes? Who would do such a thing? Who would give a tiny being such reign?

            Lucas hadn't been aware, but he has been looking up at the ceiling. When the phone vibrates in his hand, he looks down at it, his neck cracking on the way. His eyes feel dry, itchy. He slides the screen to light and looks at the email sent to his Suffolk account. It's been sent to everyone.

 

*

 

Dear Students, Faculty and Staff,

            It is with a heavy heart that I write to inform you of the death of adjunct professor Noah Lancaster. Survived by his ex-wife and daughter, Rebecca Hornby and Sarah Lancaster, Noah was the director of Suffolk University's Astronomy Camp and taught multiple courses throughout the Science Department.

            There will be a "Gathering of Friends" tomorrow, Thursday, for all who wish to share their feelings of loss and reflect on fond memories and special moments with Noah. The gathering will be at 5:30 PM at Boston Common.

            According to law enforcement officers, Noah was found in his Allston apartment after having hung himself from the high beam in his closet. He had been out of contact with his family for days and they asked police to look for him, concerned for his well-being and emotional state.

            The death of any of our faculty is devastating to our community, especially in situations like this and we want to reach out to friends and acquaintances who knew Noah. The loss of a teacher, friend and confidant reminds us that the life of each person in our community is precious. This loss is particularly painful for the Suffolk Astronomy Camp and the director of university-sanctioned club activities is providing counseling for the staff and members. "Everyone associated with the club is devastated," said Activities Director Ian Edge. "Noah was a talented administrator, learned professor and a friend to all club members and students. We mourn his loss deeply and pray for his family and loved ones."        

            Those who knew Noah may benefit from speaking with a staff member or counselor. Suffolk's counseling staff and the director's staff are available as we begin the grieving process. Anyone who would like to talk about their feelings of loss or concern for others may contact Counseling Services at 278-6655 or the Violet Center for Religious and Spiritual Life at 278-4317. Counselors are available after hours on call by contacting Campus Safety and Police at 278-0939. The Student Life administrator-on-call may also be reached at 278-0012 at any time.

            If you have any questions or if I can be of assistance, please email me at elon@suffolk.edu or call at 278-3647.

            Paul Elon

            Vice President for Student Life

            Dean of Students

 

*

 

            Me

                        Are you off work tonight?

            Will

                        yea? whats up?

            Me

                        Do you want to hang out?

            Will

                        lol

                        didnt think u had a sense of humor

                        this is a joke right??

            Me

                        Yes or no.

            Will

                        yea sure

 

*

 

It's just after 8 PM and the sun went away long ago. To Lucas, it feels as if it has been Ages since he last saw the light. When he tries to remember, standing out amidst the vast fields of Boston Common, looking up at the opaque sky, he thinks of the warm spring that filtered through ringlets of brown hair and the air-light giggle – that face obstructed by sunrays. No matter what he does, he thinks, he cannot find light in anything else. From all points resides a vast abyss, and he has belonged to it for going on eight months.

            "Lucas?"

            Lucas jolts, though he has been peripherally aware of Will's presence at his side. They stand together on one lit walkway through the Common, looking out where hundreds of lampposts stand illumined in the dark. Beyond them are high-rise buildings like jack-o-lanterns, and the air smells of the food trucks that have long left.

            "Did you call me out here just to ignore me? I have better things to do on my nights off," he says with no real conviction. Lucas can see it in his eyes: he's tired, and if he did have plans outside the realm of staying at home and watching television, he would have said so on Twitter. Lucas is now well-versed enough to know this. Will wears a light jacket, half-buttoned, and thick jeans. Lucas feels a chill rolling through his own thin layers.

            "I don't know why I asked you here," Lucas says and turns on a heel. He begins down the path.

            Will joins him shortly, his footsteps light and quick. "Well, whatever." He pauses. "Hey, you know, you left your lame sweater at my house."

            "I know."

            "Well, get it or something."

            "I will."

            Will rolls his eyes – perhaps he thinks Lucas cannot see it. He also mouths mimicry of Lucas and shakes his head from side to side. He walks along in minute silence.

            "Are you in a poor mood?" Lucas asks.

            "A poor mood? Why would I be?"

            "You seem agitated."

            "I _am_. You're _agitating_ me." He smirks, a slow spread of the lips. "But I'm in a _great_ mood. I'm off discount!" He knocks the back of his knuckles against Lucas' upper arm. "Man, it's been forever. Scolding is no joke. After a few days of break, I get to go back to full price. Oh." He tilts his head to the side, slightly looking up at Lucas. "Guess this means you'll be on a shoestring from now on, _huh_?"

            "I am already on a shoestring."

            Will snorts, looking ahead with bright eyes. Lucas considered, in the moment, responding that he knew Will was off his punishment, but decided it’s best if Will doesn’t know Lucas peers in on him through the window of the internet. It’s not wrong, exactly. But it feels strange, and when Lucas thinks of saying it aloud, he can feel himself growing warm at the neck.

            "Maybe you should think about getting another job," Will says, stretching one arm over his head. "You won't be able to afford me if you don't." He snorts small laughter. "We don't want you out raping kids behind dumpsters if you can't get your fix, _right_?"

            Lucas grabs Will's upper arm and pulls them both off into the grass. People pass them by, linked hand in hand, talking simply and smiling in the light of the lamps. They look to not have heard Will but Lucas cannot help the way his heart races. And Will seems unbothered; his face slightly rumpled at Lucas' firm grip on him but he, as always, does not fight back. Their shoes make a soft sound in the grass, and Will is warm under Lucas' palm.

            "I don't do that," Lucas says, voice like a papercut.

            Will looks at him. The beginnings of a smile at his lips. "Don't you?"

            "No. You know I don't."

            "What? How do I _know_ that?"

            "Because–"

            "Because you told me you didn't touch your kid."

            "I," Lucas says. More people traipse down the walkways, their autumn-time boots clacking against the pavement. He feels soft fingertips at his chin, and his focus is gently turned from the crowds down into Will's dense swampy eyes. Heavily shaded by thick eyelashes. Lucas loosens his grip on Will, to match the light way the whore touches him.

            "You?" Will presses.

            "I did not say... touch. I never... I never–"

            "Fucked," Will says.

            "Yes."

            "Okay," Will says. He releases Lucas. "I believe you. But it still stands – you'll go broke if you don't do something about this."

            "Do something about this," Lucas says.

            "Mmhmm." Will removes himself from Lucas' touch. So quickly and effectively that for a moment Lucas does not realize they are no longer connected. Will looks like a sylph in the murky, florescent light, feet moving light onto the pavement again. He nods his head and continues to walk. Lucas follows, and Will speaks without looking at him: "It's not like you'd be the first to drown in debt and depression over appointment needs. They can get kinda intense." He cracks his neck. "But you can get a second job, and you'd probably be okay. Most people don't have whores willing to let them know this stuff. You might be the luckiest Mickey to walk the earth, you know."

            Lucas glances at Will and then ahead as they walk through a greatly shaded area devoid of lampposts. The great branches of a willow overhang the path, leaves grazing the top of Lucas' head. It feels almost like a tunnel, like the Sumner unlit. Lucas cannot see Will now in the dark but he wonders if the whore is holding his breath, the way he did on that first night through the tunnel. And when he holds his breath, what does he wish for?

            Does he wish for a do-over?

            That the last few weeks never happened? Or perhaps the last two months. That he could go back to the very instant Lucas ordered him and take it away. Make that moment disappear, and then perhaps he would have gotten what he wanted. Perhaps Lucas would not be thinking about what he has been thinking about since that call this afternoon. For when a child bleats in despair, it is hard for Lucas to ignore it. All the harder that it is his blood and bone bleating.

            The shaded area ends and they are both of them confronted with the wide valley that resides in the middle of the Common. They look onto it from a slight upward tilt of a hill. Tomorrow, Lucas knows, this is where the gathering will be held in honor of Noah Lancaster's life. Lucas looks out onto the darkened valley, allowing the small breeze to blow completely through him. Like he is wearing nothing at all. Like he is nothing at all.

            Will makes a noise.

            Lucas looks at him, and finds him staring higher than the black ground. Over the tops of nearby trimmed trees, thinning with the oncoming cold, is a giant billboard, blown bright with lights beneath it. Lucas has seen this same ad, smaller, on the train. It is most prevalent on the Blue Line, for some reason. Artisyn, stark in picture, the outlines of her body the softest of curves, the lightest of bounces. Her teeth whiter than white. And the words beneath her – a call and a promise. A til' death do we part.

            As Lucas steals another glance at Will, he sees the shiny whites of his eyes, and how they glisten in the half-dark.

            "Will," Lucas says.

            "Jesus," Will says. "Weird. I've been trying to avoid these things like the plague. And still." He smiles, a rueful thing on his fresh face, and shrugs, looking away. "Guess you can't run away from some stuff."

            "I guess not."

            "Has she been talking to you since she got the campaign?"

            "No," Lucas says.

            "Figures." Will looks up again, his eyes dry. People approach from the back, walking around them with slight disapproval in their gazes, but Will and Lucas do not move. As the noise from their conversations diminish with them into the dark, Will says, "She got what she wanted. I wouldn't have been knocking around with you either, if I'd gotten it. We both said, months and months ago, that if we got that position, everything would be different – that even though we'd be competing, we would still be cool afterwards. No matter who got it. That all kinda fell apart after we were ordered together though." Will scratches a hand through his hair. "Some old Mickey ordered us both and had me fuck her while he jacked off behind his camera. He said we looked like brother and sister. She didn't like that much."

            Lucas feels the silence between them like something tangible. In the lull, he says, "And you?"

            "Well, I didn't like it _either_. But hell." He throws up his hands in surrender. "It's our fucking job. You don't get to be picky about it. Like, she's always saying that. They're all fucking saying that, I– I know what they say behind my back. That I'm not professional enough. But I do _everything_ a Mickey asks. I go the extra mile even though–" Will swallows heavily, and stomps down the hill. Lucas has to hurry after him, and he thinks about Will having sex with a woman, and he keeps quiet for so long that he hasn't spoken a word until they reach the Public Gardens gate.

            The blinding light of the street and the cars confront them, and there is music playing nearby, though Lucas does not know where from.

            Will is looking at him, curls blowing light across his pale face. He begins to smile, one eyebrow raised. "I know what you're thinking, Lucas."

            Lucas startles. "Yes?"

            "Yeah. You're surprised I'd fuck a girl. Listen, don't think just because I ride bitch with you I can't do anything else. I can do anything at all. I've done it all." He turns again for the crosswalk, and at length, Lucas follows. It turns out that Will did not know what he was thinking. Lucas can, on some level, respect Will's range of abilities – his willingness to do anything without another thought. Will can place himself in a character and live there for the space of sex. But Lucas is not so capable. He can only be one thing. He cannot be imagined away.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a shame.


	16. No, Daddy

The numbers are abstract. When Lucas looks at them, he feels something in his core that resembles a frenzy, and then some larger part of him, that which can only be described as Reason, beats it back with a forcible bludgeoning. The frenzy dies down, for now. He looks at the numbers for a while longer, considering them with a bit of removal. He can hear a voice that sounds something like his own when he speaks his mother tongue:

            _This is your life. This is your life that has dwindled to three digits. You banished yourself to this desolate place and look what has become of you._

            And another voice in response. It sounds like his own in English, like a man treading thin ice:

            _If I am close to poverty, it is only what I deserve._

            _Do all who chase their own happiness deserve such an end? Poverty and death?_

            Lucas' mouth twitches at this.

            _Not all_ , says the English voice.

            _Not him_ , says the Danish. _And not you._

            Lucas is not so sure about that. He sits on the bed in his jungle-like apartment. Upon coming in late last night, he sought to pick up a few bottles from the kitchen, throw them into an empty garbage bag. Some small grasp at normality, though the word in his mind caused him instant and intense unrest. When he took a milk carton from the counter, still bloated with cheese-like substance, a cockroach ran from incoming light. Lucas watched its cousins scatter throughout the kitchen. When he gathered enough trash to fill the bag, he opened the apartment door into the corridor – a young woman who lives down the hall bypassed him. She looked, for an instant, disgusted, and her chest puffed out as if she was holding her breath. Lucas glanced back at the apartment: a landfill from where he stood. The odor, unknown to him from his constant proximity, attacking the woman like a mugger on the street. She hurried away.

            When Lucas returned from the dumpster between the buildings, he took close care to shut the door quickly behind him. He looked at the apartment, at the kitchenette which he had emptied of at least half its trash. And yet, looking at it, he saw it was completely filled. The milk cartons, the beer, the balled up cellophane wrappers redeposited and, yes, even multiplying. As if his hard work, his time spent being good, amounted to nothing.

            Nothing at all.

 

*

 

                        Alana Bloom @Art1syn – Oct 2

                        Thank you all for your support with #deepsugar and #mickeywants campaign!

                        Alana Bloom @Art1syn – Oct 1

                        Working very hard for all my Mickeys. I will try to reply to all fan emails! <3

                        Alana Bloom @Art1syn – Sept 30

                        All the new business is really astounding. And when Daddy is happy, #deepsugar is happy.

 

            Lucas has never frequented Artisyn's Twitter, but he has glimpsed it. It's been nigh unavoidable at times, when he has searched so thoroughly through Will's mentions and hashtags that he ended up going from Blyss and Maculet to Frivolitee and, finally, Artisyn's, not so long ago. The messages she writes now seem wholly different. Where she was once like the others, focused on pedicures and coffee and her own wide-eyed view of the world, now only mentioned is the company and business. If Lucas dares to think about it, he would suspect it were not really her writing them. They have a distance to them now, a remove.

            This, surely, would have become of Will's own account if he had gotten the campaign. The company's own idol, their it boy, their doll without a heart. Lucas looks at the screen of his phone as he stands at the edge of Boston Common in the dusky light. He tells himself this, of course, is for the best. Will would not have been happy with it. He could not have been. He never really needed it at all.

            Lucas darkens the phone and steps further into the park.

            Its fresh green fields are lightly dusted with dun-colored leaves and heavily thronged with people. They hold small lights in their cupped hands, and from this distance they look like large fireflies. Upon closer inspection and as Lucas moves into the thick crowds of students and professors, barely any of whom he recognizes, he sees they are small candles fashioned inside Dixie cups to abate the wind.

            The deeper recesses of the crowd smell softly of bonfire, and there is a wooden table where the candles sit. Lucas takes one quietly, and looks across the table, at the end, to see a middle-aged woman and a young girl standing dourly together. Their faces, the look of grey grief there, tell Lucas they must be the Rebecca and Sarah that were mentioned in the email. Lucas lingers near the table, and looks over the top of the lit Dixie cup. He takes in the details of their faces: the wife is all angles and high cheekbones; the daughter is childishly plump and healthy-looking. Red in her cheeks, with her father's storm eyes.

            Lucas is not ignorant of the likeness these two hold to Kirsten and the boy. Though he wonders if Kirsten would look half so miserable at Lucas' own death. Only this: Lucas knows the boy would cry. The boy would scream. The boy is Lucas and Lucas is him. He would do the same at the boy's death – and he would perhaps never stop. He would follow him into death, quite probably, and without much hesitation.

            No, there would be less than a day before he made up his mind.

            "Hey, how's tricks?"

            Lucas nearly drops the candle. He doesn't need to look back – that airy, line-straight voice is all too familiar. Though when he does turn, he is surprised to see that Mason is not alone. Margot accompanies him, and Frivolitee, both standing on either side like a flock of birds heading south for encroaching winter. They are each dressed in black, and Frivolitee's makeup is understated, soft, compared to what she wore at the office a month ago.

            "What are you doing here?" Lucas hears himself ask. Though he thinks he knows.

            Mason shrugs. "What's everyone doing here? Don't be dense."

            Margot is nose-deep in her phone once more, and Lucas cannot tell her expression. Frivolitee breaks formation: she moves to the table and takes a candle with a feather-light hold. He can see the shadows her fingertips cast on the cup, the way they dance. Overhead, the sky moves from maroon to black. The stars are in everyone's hands.

            She looks at the wife and child at the head of the table, and Lucas sees her double-take. Perhaps she has seen them; pictures in Noah's home. Lucas can imagine him: welcoming Noah, helpful Noah, wanting her to understand how he lived his life, in those moments he was not drowning in her illusions. But Frivolitee does not move to offer condolences. She comes back to the three of them, and just as she does, Lucas shakes his head and moves further into the crowd.

            He does not want anything to do with them. He holds the candle still, but he is leaving, moving candidly through the silently heaving masses. It is denser than it was just minutes ago. Yet, he hears shoes through the leaves and dry grasses behind him.

            "Hey, wait! Wait a sec, Lucas, come on."

            Lucas stops. The candle flickers under his chin, and he turns to see Mason walking up, hair crazed, glasses slightly askew. Lucas must look incredulous because Mason laughs at him in that way. "What? Didn't think I knew your name? Your card shows up in our accounts like clockwork."

            "What is it you want?" Lucas asks.

            "We're here on business," Mason says, motioning to Frivolitee at his left. Margot is somewhere in the crowd, no doubt left behind on her phone. "We usually come and grieve when this kind of thing happens."

            Lucas feels his face muscles tighten. He looks at Frivolitee, her hair a blood red in the night. She looks away.

            "You?" Lucas asks, voice calm and deep. "This happens to you often?"

            "Not _her_ , Jesus. Not anyone in particular, it's not like– it's not like we make this a _habit_ ," Mason says, turning the black collar of his coat up. He looks around like people might be listening. As if this was a Twitter account and he was using a trending hashtag. The whole world his audience. "But you know, these things can happen. People get in too deep. I'm not– I'm not _saying_ it was because of _us_ , or her, or anything. This isn’t a statement."

            "Yet you knew," Lucas says, to Frivolitee again. Talking as if Mason is not really there, just a noisy apparition between them.

            She, finally, glances up. Then around.

            "Look at me," Lucas says.

            "Hey, don't boss her," Mason says.

            But she looks at him. There is some hesitation in her eyes, or demureness, Lucas thinks. Though that may well be his imagination – wanting to see any shame in her. The wind blows, her curls snaking around the white length of her neck. She holds the candle close. She says something, but Lucas cannot hear what. Somewhere, someone else is crying.

            "What?" Lucas asks.

            Mason looks to her as well, eyebrows furrowed.

            "I didn't mean for this to happen," she whispers, voice low and wondering. As if she does not fully know the extent of Lucas' allegations. "Not–"

            "That's a lie. You did– I heard you saying he was selling his furniture to afford you."

            "Lots of Mickeys do that," she says, more insistent.

            "Tons," Mason says, waving a hand.

            "You should not allow it. You should have not allowed him to buy you again."

            Her eyes widen. "How was I going to _do_ that?"

            "Don't be ridiculous," Mason says, louder, then softens his voice when a few people turn to stare. "Obviously the guy had _prob_ lems. Hang ups. Some of which had nothing to do with us, with her."

            Finally, Lucas turns his gaze wholly to Mason, which seems to enliven and satisfy the man. "You have a responsibility to your customers. These people you suck dry."

            "I’ve heard that one before. Oh yeah, you bet. And where does _personal responsibility_ come into play here?"

            "You cannot–"

            "I'm a _business_ man. Foremost." He raises one long, slender finger in the dark. The world seems to swirl around him, until the candles blur into starry lines and even Frivolitee diminishes from view. “I’m the man running the corner store. What, I’m going to stop serving burgers because some guy is getting high cholesterol? What, I’m going to stop serving alcohol because some woman wakes up every day and drinks a liter? Absolutely not, _Lucas_ , and I’ll tell you something else: this doesn’t make me the bad guy. It makes him the idiot, and you the accomplice. You’re here; aren’t you his friend? Weren’t you his friend? Didn’t you notice anything going on with him?”

            _Is everything all right, Noah?_

_Sure, of course._

            Lucas says nothing, and Mason rolls his sky-blue eyes and twists his mouth in a satisfied fashion. Lucas stands before him, feeling uncomfortable and wretched and tiny.

            “It’s a tragedy,” Mason says, relenting. “But these things happen.”

            “And how much longer? How much longer will it go on?” Lucas asks, his voice lower than a whisper. Yet Mason picks it up.

            “As long as there’s commerce. Now, I...” He pauses, looking aside to find that Frivolitee is crying. Lucas stares over at her, and he can just barely make it out: the small tears rolling down the sides of her nose. Her face scrunched as if she cries in spite of herself. Mason waves a hand at her, near her candle. “Come on, sweetiepie. Don’t smudge your makeup. Where’s Margot? Does she have your kit?”

            Frivolitee is shaking her head – the motion is independent of any question asked of her. Lucas watches as Mason sighs, looking put upon and mumbles that they should be going and where is Margot anyway and Lucas feels his face grow hot and his palms grow wet.

            He wants to tell Mason this is his fault, but he knows it isn’t. Then he wants to say the same to Frivolitee but that would not be true either. He would be best served going to the table of candles and saying it to the wife standing there like a withered tree, but he turns and goes to leave.

            From just behind him, Mason says: “Hey, don’t tweet anything about this, okay?”

            Lucas takes another step.

            “Pft. Hey, did you hear me, Lucas?”

            Lucas looks down at the candle flickering.

            “Jesus Christ. You guys are all the same.”

            Lucas turns on a heel, the cup crushed in his fist, and he ricochets it into Mason’s face. They both fall to the grass in a tangled thud and Lucas can hear himself shouting, “That’s right!” at the very instant his fist connects with Mason’s face. The bone he feels beneath his knuckles is strangely removed. His grip on Mason’s collar is slickened with blood and further in the background, hemming the shouting, are whispered muffles and gasps of surprise. There forms a wide circle around them. Frivolitee begins screaming though Lucas can only see her black Prada boots in the grass nearby. Margot’s join hers and she is shouting for Lucas to stop, it needs to stop. When Lucas does stop, that shouting ends too, and he realizes with a hoarse throat it was him all along.

 

*

 

Lucas knocks before he realizes it's with his busted knuckles. He hisses slightly at the pain, and brings his hand back from the door. Eyes it steadily; the ruptured skin, the redness. He is still looking down in the bright hallway when the door opens and Will is standing there, suddenly, his green eyes wide in the hall light. He wears saggy pajama bottoms, a cotton shirt. His curls are shimmering wet from the shower.

            "Lucas? Uh." He looks down at Lucas' trembling hand. Presses his lips together. "I thought you had a class tonight or something."

            Lucas lowers the hand to his side. Shrugs. "I cancelled it."

            Will raises an eyebrow.

 

*

 

He doesn't know why he's here. He didn't have a plan, really. Only things that flashed through his mind on his trek away from the Common, on his way up the elevator and down the long lovely hall. That Margot or Mason would have texted Will and told him what Lucas had done; that they would have told Will to tell Lucas he is no longer welcome as a Mickey after assaulting their president's face in full view of a candlelit vigil of a dead Mickey. Thinking of it in that way almost set Lucas to laughter, though it would have been tinged with grief. No matter what, he meant what he said as he laid into Mason, again and again, with all the fervor and strength of his pent-up longing. Noah and Lucas are – _were_ , he thinks – the same. Slaves to themselves and the universe. It wasn't Noah's fault.

            _No, it couldn't be_ , Lucas thinks as he sits on the floor of Will's living room. The lights are turned off, the wide glow of the sixty-inch television screen enough to read by if need be. The carpet is even softer sitting than it is standing. It's like a mattress itself. Lucas is leaned back against the foot of the couch, legs splayed out before him, a beer in one hand. Will lies down on his side, facing the television. There are six empty beers lying about, two knocked over. More than half are Will's.

            "This is the best part!"

            Lucas looks up warily. "You know them by parts?"

            "It's a re-run. Does the word _marathon_ mean anything to you? Wait, wait, here it goes– Agh!"

            Lucas has, hours ago, decided this show is morally bankrupt and exploitative. He looks at it every few minutes when Will exclaims that the _best part_ is happening and yet all he sees is mountains of trash and vulnerable, sick people being videotaped for an audience watching gleefully at home and tsking behind their beers and snacks. As Will giggles and mutters _gross_ , Lucas thinks that were someone to go into his own hovel of an apartment with a camera, this would be exactly what they would see. A sick person living sickly, and no one understands. Not even the doctors who poke and prod and counsel, whose _jobs_ it is to understand.

            Will turns around, flopping on his back as a commercial flashes and coats the room in a dull yellow. Will is spread out like a starfish, moving his arms like making snow angels.

            "I get to go back to work tomorrow," he says, staring up.

            "Get to?"

            "Well, you know. I'm not making money sitting around _here_. And I'm back at normal rates."

            "I know," Lucas says. He sets his beer on the glass coffee table nearby. Shifts his bare feet into the rug. "I know," he says again.

            "Oh yeah?" Will's face is alight with intoxication. He's a wisp of a man and should not have had so much to drink, that much is clear to Lucas. Will is grinning, and rolls himself onto his stomach, legs up and kicking idly behind him. "So have you thought about it? Getting another job to afford me?" He drums fingertips insistently against the carpet, smiling against it with one cheek on the floor. "You could work as a stallion part-time."

            The notion makes Lucas laugh, of all things.

            "What? I'm serious," Will whines.

            "You are not."

            "I know Margot said we weren't hiring, but..." Will arches his back a bit. "Well, Daddy is a little pliant. After I'm off punishment, he won't be so snooty to me anymore. He's forgiving."

            Lucas doesn't think he'll be so forgiving after the mess Lucas made of his face. Though this he does not say. Will continually looks at the threads of carpeting and for as drunk as he looks, they might well be dancing before him. Lucas, for an instant, thinks of telling Will about the vigil and Mason's face and even Noah, though some part of Lucas knows Will wouldn't care about another whore's Mickey in the least. Like any child, he is foremost concerned with his own toys and whether they are working or broken.

            But Lucas says instead, "I'm leaving, Will. I cannot–" He pauses, stricken by the suddenness of that green gaze on him. "I cannot continue living like this."

            "Leaving?" Will asks it as if the word is foreign. Lucas wonders if he'd slipped into Danish. "Leaving, and going where?"

            "Home."

            "H–"

            "Denmark."

            Will's eyes swim. Struggle to focus. He laughs, a breathless noise just under the sounds of mentally ill people crying on the television. "You're joking, right? This is some sick joke?"

            "No."

            "Why–" Will struggles to his elbows, face changing in some semblance of seriousness. "What would you _do_ there?"

            "My son needs me."

            "That’s stupid. That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard."

            "You can say that because you don’t have children. You cannot resist them when they call for you. You don’t question it, or wonder. You just go."

            "You just… you just go," Will says and looks unbelieving. As if Lucas has told him the sky was not blue any longer but red, a violent red, and on fire. Lucas cannot stand that expression, so he looks elsewhere – at the television, at people who scream at each other. Anger, outrage. Lucas can no longer see Will properly – only in his periphery: him slowly, hesitantly, moving, or crawling, nearer Lucas' side.

            "This has been proof to me," Lucas says as he feels Will at his side. He continually stares at the screen. "These past months. I have failed at all of it. I cannot teach here. I no longer care for the students, if I ever did at all. I have lost the only friend I had, if I could even call him a friend. I could not even help right the wrong I did you," he says and turns to his side to see, feel, and smell Will curled up near him. The cherry scent of his hair. His cheek soft against Lucas' shoulder. "I don’t think I even tried. I'm going back to my son, because there is nothing else I do well."

            "Have you _ever_ tried?" Will asks. His voice sounds far away. He plays with a loose thread on Lucas' sleeve. "I mean– I mean, _really_ tried to do something else? Or do you just think about him, always?"

            Lucas doesn't know how to answer that. Will makes a soft sound and pushes the crown of his head up under Lucas' chin. He reeks of alcohol. Will mumbles something that sounds like _fuck me_.

           

*

 

The stipulation is this: he cannot think of the boy. At this, Lucas nearly bolts, but his motions are slowed with the drink and Will is heavy when he wants to be. Will is clingy when he wants to be; his hands move all along Lucas to shuck him of various clothing items. His mouth: relentless. Lucas is confronted with something he has not had from Will before. An open-mouthed, adult kiss. One in which he participates. That first time on the darkened shore of Lucas' troubled waters, in his apartment, Lucas never gave so much as an inch. And during their appointments, Will kissed virginal, like a child, just slack-jawed and overly wet. He is measured and slow, now.

            The television stands on, and in small moments where their mouths pull away for breath, Lucas glances up at it. He winces, and Will is sucking his earlobe, working the zipper of his pants. The pictures flashing on the screen are nigh intolerable, and the vastness of it lights the floor where they wrestle like schoolchildren. Lucas would prefer it dark. He doesn't think he'll be given that.

            Will is naked before Lucas is. Completely bare, his clothes surrounding them on all sides. His skin harbors a furnace and he grinds up into the sheer material of Lucas' boxers. Encased in whines are words that Lucas can barely make out, things that only make sense when finally stringed together:

            _I–I haven't_

_there's been no_

_nothing else but appointment sex_

_since I moved here_

            Will becomes more impatient and takes the last piece of clothing from Lucas. Though Will himself is flushed and rigid, Lucas is not. Will takes it in stride – he sucks Lucas with a fervor only children have for ice pops. The sounds are insanely lewd. The filthy pop it makes when Will retracts his mouth, the suck and slurp of him licking greedily the underside. Lucas is leaking heavily by the time they get into some form of a position. Lucas is on his knees, and has Will in his lap, Will's back against the foot of the couch. In this way, the light of the television shines fully on Will's face. His wet mouth, his dazed eyes, the hair falling all over his head.

            "We should have got a condom," Lucas says, hissing as Will takes Lucas in hand and painstakingly inserts him. Will has one leg wrapped around Lucas' hip, the other over the shoulder, foot bobbing off into the ether. Lucas places his hands on Will's hips and settles him down until they are deeply connected. "I shouldn't be–"

            Will says in a great exhale: "I _hate_ condoms." He licks his lips, then licks Lucas'. "Fucking Ziploc _bags_. They ruin _every_ thing."

            Lucas cannot rightly argue with that. The heat now is intense, searing. It would bring him to the edge in seconds if it wasn't wholly Will here before him: Will's voice, Will's long limbs, the little prickles of his pubic hair. Lucas leans forward to put his head down, but Will jolts him.

            "Uh uh," he says, grinding down again, challenging Lucas to move. "I– I've done everything for you, things– things people shouldn't have to do. And you did j-jack _shit_ for me. Wh-when I needed you to. You admitted it. You didn’t, _fuck_ , you didn’t even, _God_ , try." He groans when Lucas moves up into him in a steady pace, when Lucas watches him talk. "So you're gonna– do this for me. You are."

            He finds something he likes. When he rolls his hips up in a particular way, Will shudders and clenches and that's ten times better than heat alone. Lucas is muttering: "This is... about you?"

            "Mmm."

            The sounds come in expected intervals. Of skin hitting skin, and the slippery noise of Will's hands on Lucas' sweat-coated shoulders. The heavy breathing that Lucas fills the room with and the way Will cries out. He continually looks at Lucas in something verging an accusatory way, checking to see where his eyes are, whether they are opened or closed. Lucas supposes he does have a point. He has done much for Lucas, payment or not. And Lucas is not ignorant of this fact; kindness is a non-sequitur, but retribution is a high-praised notion in most religions. Including his own. He takes Will in hand between the two of them and pumps him in time with Lucas' own fast-paced thrusts. Will's voice grows higher in register simply from pleasure and Lucas clings to that note as if it would save his life. Will crushes his mouth against Lucas' and comes in hot spurts across Lucas' chest, dripping down his clavicle and chest hair. He is still pulsating dryly and moaning when Lucas comes, nearly soundless, into him.

            This time, Will allows him to lean forward. Just gently. With his forehead against Will's collarbone. He is positioned like a man in mourning, and can feel Will's arms wrap around his neck and shoulders. Can feel Will's calming breath in his ash-brown hair.

            Lucas tries to de-join them, but Will makes a sound of refusal.

            "Wait, w-wait," he says, tinged with laughter. "I, ah, wait. I'm sensitive, I'm– it's too much. Hold on. For a sec. Okay?"

            Lucas replaces his hand onto Will's thigh. Back to his senses, he can hear the television shouting. It must be late. He says, "Have you... really not had sex outside of an appointment? Since working here?"

            "Mmm."

            He isn't sure why he's surprised. It must be hard to have a proper relationship, being a whore. Lucas imagines that as soon as Will tells someone his job, they shy away. Few people could be in a relationship knowing their partner is having sex all night with strangers. Still, Will's never said a word about it.

            In a moment, Will relaxes enough so that Lucas can slide out. There is semen all over the carpet, and the mess on Lucas' chest has cooled disgustingly. But his arms are afire from half-holding Will up and he cannot abide going for a wet cloth. Will falls onto the shag rug as if it were a cumulus cloud, and in the blue light of the television, he is illuminated. Lucas sits still on his heels, looking down at him.

            "I did not know," Lucas says simply.

            Will makes a face, blows air from the side of his mouth. "I never really thought about it, you know. Like, how my personal life would be if I made this my profession." He wipes sweat from his brow. The screen plays in his eyes; people looking upon their own horror and sobbing. "It's good in some ways. In some ways not. That's just how it is, when it's a high-brow agency, normalized like this. Yeah, because, like, when I was a foal, I didn't tell anyone what I did. I never talked about it, and it wasn't, you know, sanctioned or anything. Just something I did on the side because I was good at it. And I hated the idea of an office job." He smiles, a little. "So bigger cities, bigger than Clearwater anyway, they had ways for me to properly work. And I took it. Never told Daddy about what I did before, and the other whores don't know. There's no way I would've gotten hired on if they did. Something about not being professional." He shrugs into the carpet, eyelids lowering. "Maybe that's true. I mean I try. I do try. I give it my best shot every night, but damn, I… if I’m– when I’m _honest_ , I don't really feel professional. Maybe that's why Artisyn was right for the job after all. She seems, I don't know, adult. Like the way she moves, and carries herself. But, I..." The swallow is audible. "I still feel like a kid. Like, all the time. Every day."

            Lucas is quiet. He looks down at Will, the length of his body, and for a long moment there is no more talking. Will slightly curls up, and he looks to be drifting off, laying amidst their discarded clothes. The room is thick with the scent of sex, and Lucas’ knees hurt from the sitting position. So, tenderly, he moves and lies a respectable distance apart from Will. He reaches briefly for the remote on the coffee table and turns off the television. The living room, the entire apartment, is pitch black.

            Minutes later, he is on the verge of falling asleep when he hears a very soft: "Hey. You know, you could stay with me, if you want to."

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *idly examines nails*


	17. Yes, Daddy

He remembers: it was past the boy's bedtime.

            They sat in the living room of the warm countryside house, surrounded on all sides by dense woods and the lake not far behind the property. If he listened, very intently between pauses in the television volume, he could hear the call of barn owls out in the night. Just the glow of the television on the two of them, sitting at the foot of the couch. The small wooden coffee table pushed to the side. The hardwood floor layers beneath them, beneath blankets of cotton and wool, ones that Kirsten's mother had crocheted for the boy in his infancy. He has yet to relinquish them and Lucas has always been enamored by this.

            Slowly. Slowly, the words lost meaning when pouring from the boy's roselike mouth. His eyes grew hazy as he stared at the screen. And only half an hour prior he had been giggling and grinning about how Lucas was being naughty and allowing him to stay up, despite the fuss Kirsten had made about his 9 PM bedtime. Lucas knew she must have been aware; when she was due for long shifts at work, rarely did Lucas hold the boy to such strict rules. Lucas told the boy before his eyes drooped that he must pretend he was in bed at the proper time. Lucas told the boy this was to be their secret, if only in seeming.

            On the nearby coffee table, two drinks sat. Lucas' water, half sipped. The boy's Coke glass, all gone but the tiniest of fizz left in the bottom. Lucas encouraged him to drink it all – the caffeine would help him stay up for the remainder of the movie, he'd said. He had watched as the boy's throat bobbed with it, as he swallowed it all down. And now the sleeping pills, crushed to powder, were in full effect.

            The boy sagged against Lucas, his eyes closing, then snapping open for a millisecond. Then sliding closed again.

            Lucas looked down at him. His arm lingered around the boy's shoulders. "Marcus," he whispered.

            The boy jolted, then looked up through hooded eyes. The bounce of his lank hair. Shadows forming on his face. "I'm so– I don't think I'll–" He cut himself off with a sleepy smile.

            "Do you want to go to bed?"

            "But the movie–"

            "I'll rent it for you sometime."

            The boy looked to be weighing his options. He raised a light eyebrow. "This weekend?"

            Lucas smiled. "Of course. Anything you want."

            There was a slight pause wherein the boy's eyes were shutting once more. Lucas looked down at the pale face in the stark blue light. He never became used to staring into the face of perfection. He doubts anyone would. The boy's head lolled lightly, the nape of his neck fitting ideally into the curve of Lucas' forearm. He jerked again and looked up, eyes barely open.

            "Can I tell you a secret?"

            "Yes."

            The boy smiled – open-mouthed. "I love you more than Mama."

            Lucas could feel it thread through his heart: a particular joy mixed with some ill-gotten pride. He hid his grin in the boy's hair and whispered that he should not say such things. The boy only laughed breathlessly and looked to be fighting a battle with his own eyelids. Lucas turned the television off in short order. He took the boy easily in his arms–

            _you don't have to carry me_ , murmured to him

            _i love doing it_ , he said, reveling in the knowledge that this would not be remembered in the morning

            –and ascended the stairs. The house completely darkened. He had no need for light. It was bundled right there in his arms, shining like a beacon beyond the sea for all those lost to the raging waters. Lucas took the boy into his room, remembering how many steps there were from the doorway to the twin bed at the far end. The carpet soft beneath his socked feet. In the small amount of light from the moon and stars peering through the parted curtain and down into the bed, Lucas could make out his face.

            He was growing, that much was certain. The bouncy baby boy he had produced – _he_ had produced, him alone, because in his darkest, greediest moments, he considered Kirsten just the gateway, but the boy was _his_ , only his – was stretching and changing before his very eyes. Laying in the downy covers, completely asleep now with little fanfare, the boy looked strangely a year or so younger than his age. It was sleep that did it. It calmed his face – those expressions he'd had of late, the school and puberty related anxieties taking claim on him. Lucas hated those things. If he could have, he would have used his body as a shield against them. He would have kept him ignorant of the world. He would never have been so cruel as to wish knowledge upon his child.

            The boy's breathing was steady. His chest heaved and fell, feather-light. Lucas laid a hand upon his cheek, rubbing the rough pad of his thumb into the height of his cheekbone. The roseate color rising. Oh, he had wanted this.

            He leaned down and pressed a chaste kiss to the boy's lips. He still tasted of Coke and candy, teeth unbrushed. Pulling back, just an inch, Lucas smiled to himself. He felt as a child at a theme park; restrictionless, in notion alone. He would not go too far.

            Something in him said, in a tone of ease, _What's too far?_

            Lucas would know when he got there. And he would retreat. And he would tuck the boy into bed and think of this moment all his days. There was no harm here. Lucas would never cause him _harm_. He thought this, and placed his hand beneath the boy's nightshirt, to touch the soft skin of his belly. So smooth. Lined with peach fuzz. Lucas heart thudding in his ears, like the rushing of water. He began to go out of himself in spite of wanting to be in the here and now; too difficult. Too difficult to stay trapped in his body when the sensations and touches and textures were heaven-propelling. He allowed his hands freedom; they roamed beneath sheer fabric and touched places on the boy Lucas had not touched since washing him years and years ago. And his lips, yes, of course. They were taken over and over again. Candy sweet, rotting Lucas' teeth. Lucas decayed from the inside out.

            Briefly, and not too fast: he placed their mouths together and allowed his tongue to push in. He shifted lightly, leaning over the boy's torso. The only friction at his groin was he against himself, but that was enough. God, it was enough. He kept moving and the heat, the fucking heat. A tiny dying star beneath him. Tears in Lucas' eyes. Nothing would ever feel as good as this. _This_. **_This_**. Th...

            He heard something. And there was something else, some – he could not understand what it was, but something like taking a step off a cliff in his stomach. Before even turning to look at the door, he knew, that split second before, and then that split second after when he pried his mouth from the boy's, their bottom lips connected by a translucent line of their shared DNA. And she stood barely silhouetted at the door, still in the clothes she left in that morning. A long pink skirt, a white collared shirt. Hair voluminous around her shoulders.

            Lucas sat upright, his mouth wet, come in his pants. He took his hands from the boy, from the dense warmth of his body beneath his clothes. Lucas and Kirsten stared at each other, unmoving, as if they were stitched into a tapestry. The boy's soft, rhythmic breaths in the background. And if they could have been conveyed by a colored thread, they would have been blue – sky blue.

 

*

 

Lucas opens his eyes and feels a stiff pain in his back. He is hit with the bright light of morning coming through the vertical blinds in Will's living room, strewn across the walls of windows. He looks around without moving his head; everything is as it was before he fell asleep. Except.

            Will is leaned into him, body pasted to Lucas' side. Glancing down, he can see the flutter of dark eyelashes, and more than that – Will's fingers lightly threading through Lucas' chest hair. There is a beige throw blanket over the two of them, covering their naked and intertwined bodies. This was not here the night before either. Will's fingertips moving in slow, tiny circles. Fingernails scratching only barely – to not wake Lucas. It is impossible to tell exactly but he thinks Will is looking out of the window, into the rising morning. Lucas closes his eyes and makes some slight movement as if he is just now waking. Immediately, Will jerks his hand back to himself and he half turns away, shutting his eyes tight.

            It is easy now for Lucas to move more and his back cracks with it. He groans, running a hand through his hair. They are surrounded by beer bottles and their clothes. Next to him, Will feigns motions of waking. Rubbing at his eyes, yawning. He stretches his legs out, previously folded at the knees, and Lucas watches as his toes scrunch together and apart. Together and apart.

            Lucas says, in the soft silence, "I did not mean to sleep here."

            Will is rolled onto his side. His back facing Lucas. "It's whatever," he mumbles. "I don't mind."

            "You could have woken me."

            Will shrugs. "Fell asleep. Never woke up."

            Lucas glances down at the blanket still wrapped around them. He looks at the curved line of Will's spine and thinks, _How stupid do you think I am?_

            But he says, "Okay."

            Will is holding his head when he sits up. He squints and looks over at Lucas, the first time since last night that Lucas can see his expression. He doesn't know what to call it. Will asks him if he wants breakfast.

 

*

 

"Don't just stare at it," Will says, leaning over the granite counter in the kitchen. He is dressed only in boxers, and his hair is all over his head. His eyes are red-ringed and tired from a long night of drinking. Lucas remembers there was sex too, and he thinks that was a mistake. He didn't have any more money to pay for it, no. The final chunk of his money has been recently and decidedly spent. But now, he doesn't know what to call last night. A drunken tryst? A one-night stand? Those labels are too adult. He looks at Will from where he sits, clothed now, at the granite bar and wonders what it is Will calls it in his mind.

            In front of each of them is a plate. Piled high with scrambled eggs, blackened toast, and bacon that looks slightly limp. There is ink-black coffee but Will drinks it like water. He keeps shutting his eyes tightly, then opening them on Lucas, as if willing him to be gone by the time he looks again. But Lucas continues to sit here, staring at his plate.

            He takes up the fork and begins to eat, quietly.

            Will leans against the counter, shoveling food into his mouth. For the longest time, he is silent as well, the only sounds from him are chewing, and those seem louder than usual. He eats like he's angry. When he's halfway through his plate and on the second cup of coffee, he looks over the top of the mug and slurps the wetness from his lips.

            "So. Are you– I mean, like," Will says, and looks annoyed at something. He resumes: "When are you leaving?"

            Lucas tenderly moves the eggs about the plate. He doesn't look up. "My flight is on Monday."

            Will snorts. He finishes his next mug in one long gulp, and the look on his face is as if the dregs are fabulously bitter. He says, "So, what's the plan then? Just– I don't know, just go rape your kid for eternity? Like your wife would let you get anywhere near him?"

            Lucas doesn't have the energy to bristle. He only says, "You know that isn't true."

            "Do I?"

            "We have gone over this, Will."

            "No, no we haven't, you just keep expecting me to believe you." He stands up straight, bracing his hands against the edge of the counter. Shoulders hunched, he looks at Lucas plainly. "You keep saying that it's not like you, you wouldn't, you would never, oh believe me, but I don't really know you, and you don't really know me. You could be lying. You could have raped a thousand kids. You get off so fucking hard on–"

            "Stop, Will."

            "Why? Why should I? Why are you going back there? What the fuck’s the point?"

            Lucas places the fork down gently. "He's my son. He needs me."

            "That's it?"

            "That's it." Lucas looks at Will in something like pleading, or he hopes it comes across. He wants to drop it, just drop it, it has nothing at all to do with Will. "And for what it's worth. I feel I do know you."

            Will dumps his plate in the sink. "That's a laugh."

            "I do," Lucas says quietly. In his jean pocket is his phone. He can feel it, he can always feel it. It is attached to him always, and he has found that when it is not in hand, he is aware of its physical presence like a person in the room. His second heart; cracked with hairline fractures. "Listen, Will... about last night, when you asked me to sta–"

            Will makes an affronted noise so sudden that Lucas halts, looks up. Will is shaking his head, his face cherry-red, and he walks around the kitchen wall, into the living room. He dips down and grabs his clothes from the floor and the blanket, tossing them onto the couch. Even the beer bottles. "No," he's saying, "I'm not talking about that. That was… that was just me drunk. I was pretty out of it and buzzed on afterglow, if you didn’t notice. Just get out, go. You finished your food, didn't you? Good." He drops a bottle with a shaky hand, curses under his breath. Lucas watches from the stool the knots of Will's spine as he bends to pick it up again. Then he straightens and turns to see Lucas. In the sunlight, he is glowing and pale, thin and weak-looking. Lucas takes pity on him and rises easily. He goes past Will to the front door.

            At the threshold, half in and half out of the apartment, Lucas looks at Will lingering nearby. He taps the doorknob lightly and says, "Do you remember where you were? On... the seventh of April, one year ago?"

            Will looks at him, eyes narrowing in confusion.

            Lucas tries again: "What about six months ago? In February. The sixteenth, at four PM?"

            Still, Will says nothing.

            "You were here," Lucas says, scanning the apartment. "You were in this place, watching something called _Extreme Couponing_." Lucas cannot help but smile, just at the corner of his mouth, at the way Will's eyes widen, his mouth opening the smallest bit. "It was snowing, and you hated it. You said Boston was a terrible place in the winter. You wondered how you would ever get used to it, after living in Florida all of your life. Then you asked if anyone knew where you could buy an electric blanket. Eighty... no, eighty-five people responded to that tweet. They told you the names of the stores. Then, you bought one the next day. And it was green plaid, and you said you didn't know an electric blanket would have wires running all the way through it. You said, ‘It's kind of uncomfortable, but it'll do. Thanks, everyone.’" Lucas presses his lips together. "See, I know you, Will. I know everything you allow people to know. We are not strangers."

            Will opens his mouth, his eyebrows tented fully as if he is in some kind of pain. Lucas closes the door behind himself.

 

*

           

 The weekend is long. And when Lucas first comes to his apartment, in the aftermath of spending the night at Will's, he is not altogether left to his own devices. The apartment welcomes him in its dreary, overcrowded way, and he is alone for almost ten minutes.

            There is a knock on the door; hard and insistent.

            Lucas has taken off his shirt, and he knows he smells like sex. Yet he goes to the door anyway, with his tired eyes, his perpetual frown. When he opens it, he does not right off recognize the man standing there, but he does recognize the badge he wears of the apartment complex. _Blue Winery Apartments._ Lucas thinks he must be from the office.

            The man addresses him, and says he's been trying to reach him.

            "Yes?" Lucas asks.

            "There's been a few complaints," says the man. He is squat and brown-haired, tired looking as Lucas is. As Lucas has seen many men lately, or perhaps he simply recognizes it more. "From your neighbors. The smell from your apartment. Is there any sewage leakage that we can assist you with?"

            Lucas resists looking back into his apartment, even as the man is rubbernecking over his shoulder. "No, thank you."

            "Sir, we don't like to intrude on our residents. But this affects others."

            "You're right," Lucas says. "It does affect others. And I'm sorry about it."

            "I–"

            "But there is little I can do. This is who I am."

            The man tents his eyebrows, his face pulling to a confused expression. He opens his mouth, shuts it. When he takes a step back, he is shaking his head as if he has given up. Lucas is filled with some small relief; he is used to this. People giving up on him. He almost likes it. It feels reminiscent of home. The man finally says, "Tidy up, will you? If this continues, we'll be forced to add fines."

            Lucas bids the man goodbye and shuts the door. It almost isn't closed in time before he turns on a heel, pressing his back against it. His head makes the smallest noise against the wood and he looks up, at the cracked and plastered ceiling. He makes a choked sound that erupts as laughter. Fines? Fines, indeed! And what would he pay them with?

 

*

 

On Saturday night, he is lying in bed, staring into the florescent void of his phone.

 

                        Will Graham @Wonderm1nt – Oct 4

                        hope ur having fun creep

                        Will Graham @Wonderm1nt – Oct 4

                        does this get u off too???

                        Will Graham @Wonderm1nt – Oct 4

                        i just blew my nose – bet u like hearing that!!

                        Will Graham @Wonderm1nt – Oct 3

                        here this is special 4 my #1 fan   instagram.com/p/BVHMihpth

 

            Lucas does click the link. He is transferred to Will's Instagram: a picture of Will's finely manicured hand holding up his middle finger to the camera. Lucas rolls his eyes. He checks the time and sees it is nearing 12 AM. Will is somewhere across the city, in someone else's bed. Someone far richer than Lucas, or the many others who ordered him on discount. Will is back where he belongs; spreading himself in sheets of Egyptian cotton, away from his own apartment.

            Lucas considered it, somewhere in the back of his head, during the time he spent on Will's floor surrounded by beer bottles and their own clothes. As soon as the words left Will's mouth, he thought about it. Having nothing but appointment sex, since his tenure at Deep Sugar. And the way he cried out. The way he shivered. His mouth against Lucas so warm and wet and needy. A babe looking for any succor.

            _Because when I was a foal..._

            Lucas darkens the screen of his phone. He places it, gently, beside his folded glasses on the nightstand. Then he turns over and he sleeps, dreamless.

 

*

           

He sets to task on Sunday morning, when the wind is high and the gutters are choked with red leaves. His apartment is full of dilapidating furniture, things he had bought from tiny out-of-the-way outlets and thrift shops. The small nightstand which is stained beyond repair is among the worst of it. He drags these things from his apartment and takes some care not to look as if he doesn't have the intention to buy more. The apartment office is not aware of his soon-to-be disappearance and they would not take kindly to him breaking his lease. Nor does the university know it will lose a member of adjunct faculty. Another.

            He knows he has childish notions of these things. He thinks of it like freedom, like catapulting himself from the dangers of one strange country and into the loving bosom of his homeland. The things that stalk his mind, hanging leery and shadowy in the corners, are horrible images of Kirsten, Kirsten, Kirsten. Demanding to know what he's doing there, and where did he get the new address from. He likes to pretend she does not exist, and that she is, if anything, an apparition to be walked through. Striding into the new home he is unfamiliar with, through her, through her, and into the arms of his son. That warm scent the boy is sodden with. Lucas could live and die in that scent, the way things live and die in forests or the ocean. His entire ecosystem inside the bracket of the boy's thin, willowy limbs.

            The nightstand is thrown unceremoniously into the open dumpster. Lucas wipes his hands quickly on his jeans and heads back, feeling the wind whip through him. In his side pocket, he feels a familiar vibration and every time he has done so since the call, he imagines it must be the boy. It never is. And Lucas does not initiate any calls, or attempt it, wary of catching Kirsten instead. When he steps into the bottom floor of his building, he looks at the message.

 

                        Will

                                    how long have u been stalking me?

           

            That's a laugh if Lucas ever had one. That Will would be indignant about this after all he's done to Lucas is strange and, Lucas can only surmise, a cover. He wants something to say. And so he says this. Lucas ascends the stairs.

                                   

                        Me

                                    Since you first started stalking me.

 

            Lucas slips the phone back into his pocket as he reaches his floor. It vibrates immediately but he does not go to answer it. Standing in front of his door is a familiar frame and even more familiar hair. Lucas takes in a breath and goes down the hall to Mason, who stands in an autumn coat, heavy boots and a scarf, to Lucas' shabby dress of a plaid shirt and too-light jeans. Mason looks at him, with a bandage over his nose and part of his mouth, dipping to wrap at his chin.

            "Oh, I was just knocking for you," Mason says, the words nasally and strange in his unique cadence. His eyes are stark blue, bright behind the glasses. Lucas tenses as if the man would try to strike him.

            "Yes. What do you want?"

            "Don't be so unfriendly. Can I come in?"

            _No_ , Lucas wants to say. But he looks at Mason and feels bad, a little. He did not mean to hit him so hard. The man did not fight back at all, in the grass underneath Lucas. He was passive in his own demolition, and for now at least, he looks almost unrecognizable. Lucas takes the key from his pocket and opens the door.

            Upon entry, Mason noticeably stiffens. "Wow, it smells ten kinds of awful in here."

            Lucas shuts the door behind him. Wordlessly, he takes up where he left off: with a trash bag near the kitchenette, idly throwing in rotten foodstuffs.

            "Spring cleaning?"

            "It's autumn," Lucas says.

            "Well. Anyway, I thought you should know I've banned your card from our registry. Sorry, but we just can't have _violent_ Mickeys, of all things. This is about the whores, as well as, you know, _me_ ," Mason says, lingering feet from the door.

            Lucas does not look up. "That sounds fair."

            Mason looks around again. Then silence. Lucas can feel the man's skittery eyes on him, like spider's legs. He says, finally, "Oh, I get it. You're leaving."

            Lucas makes a noise, and lets Mason glean from it what he will.

            "Listen, Lucas– hey, will you put that down? I'm trying to tell you something. Jesus. I don't know where Wondermint, hell, _Will_ – 'cause let's face it, that's who he wants to be with you – gets the energy to deal with your shit. If you were my Mickey I'd've _been_ lodged a complaint against you."

            Lucas sets the trash bag down against the counter. He levels a gaze at Mason. "You do not know anything about me."

            "Ah, but it isn't so. I may not know specifics, but I get what kind of guy you are. And I may not be a whore, but I know Mickeys like the back of my hand. And, I'm sorry about your friend, really. But here's something every professional whore knows: you can't love away sickness." He shrugs, lightly, easily. "That's a service we can't provide."

            Something comes unbidden from Lucas' throat. Some noise he cannot give emotion to. He watches as Mason looks idly around the apartment which is quickly becoming bare. He thinks about the phrase _professional whore_ and Lucas thinks of Will on the floor of his apartment, in the light of the television. Curled in on himself, eyes half-lidden and so clearly lonely. This job has done nothing for Will. All his life, from foalhood to now, he has spent time with Mickeys inside him and he has ended up in that way, laying in a heap on the floor. It is not good for him. And perhaps Lucas cannot save him from himself, perhaps Lucas doesn't want to try, but if he could propel Will from this prison, would that make his life better?

            Mason looks at Lucas again and says, "Well, I guess this is goodbye, then. Good luck with... whatever it is you'll do."

            Lucas starts. He holds himself in a position such that Mason gives him full attention. All he has to do is say it. Say that Will has been a foal, and thus could never–

            _He says they can never be real professionals._

            –work out for the best.

            "Yeah?" Mason presses.

            Lucas feels the phone in his pocket. He touches it, through the fabric. He says, "Nothing. Goodbye," and closes the door behind the man as he leaves.

 

*

 

Me

                                    Since you first started stalking me.

                        Will

                                    so what u just sit & stare at my twitter & whatever? all day?

                        Me

                                    Not all day. But yes. Sometimes.

                        Will

                                    tell the fucking truth

                        Me

                                    I do it a lot.

                        Will

                                    y?

                        Me

                                    I wanted to know about you. And it interested me. The things you said.

                        Will

                                    ok. u kno u cud have asked or something

                                    instead of looking at my pics like a total freak

                        Me

                                    I guess.

                        Will

                                    & ur still leaving tomorrow?

                        Me

                                    Yes.

                        Will

                                    what time?

                        Me

                                    I have to be at the airport by 7 AM.

                        Will

                                    u getting a cab?

                        Me

                                    I suppose.

                        Will

                                    want a ride?

                        Me

                                    You're offering me a ride to the airport?

                        Will

                                    no im offering u a ride to the moon

                                    yes fuckwad the airport

 

            Lucas pauses here. He presses his lips together and his thumb hovers over the buttons, unsure of which ones to press. He sits in his barren apartment, on the floor that still faintly smells of trash despite the open windows. It is cold, and he feels the chill more insistently when he thinks of Will's apartment and his sweater that hides there, perhaps under the bed. Lucas looks up at the ceiling, sighs, and accepts the ride.

 

*

 

If indeed there are an infinite number of universes then, somewhere, the following must be true:

            Lucas is not a pedophile. And the small, brown-haired boy he has known for twelve years in this universe is not his son. The curly-headed, firestone-eyed whore is his son. And Will has gone awry since childhood, launched by some mad catapult into a life of prostitution, not made by any man's hands but simply constructed by birth. His own sensibilities. And Lucas, worried father as he is, takes Will by the shoulders and squares them to face each other.

            And he says, "Dear boy, this must come to an end. You have to figure out what is right for you, and you alone. Decide something you want for yourself and try to be content with that."

            Those eyes. Like the sun shining through chlorophyll, so wide on Lucas, then diminishing and darkening and his lips move but Will makes no sound and Lucas can only read his mouth as if they stand in the dim density of a club room, the world pounding bass around them.

            "But everything I want goes to someone else."

 

*

 

It is 6:30 AM. The sun looms just above the horizon and streaks through the blowing trees, or what is left of them. The wind also blows through Lucas. He stands outside of his building with one small bag gripped in hand. He wears jeans, a tan-plaid shirt and light jacket. He looks to the left and watches as a familiar Mercedes rolls down the one-way street, giving little care in the way of speedbumps. Lucas raises an eyebrow as it comes to halt before him and light gleams from the pitch-black finish. Lucas opens the door, tosses the bag in at his feet.

            Will looks tired, or angry. Lucas cannot tell which. He wears jeans and a wrinkled white button-up, his curls untamed. In the drink holder separating the front seats is a travel mug – Lucas remembers the ink black coffee he had at Will's apartment before the weekend. He watches as Will takes a long sip.

            "Fuckin early as hell," he grumbles, moving the car from the curb and back into the long street winding through the complex.

            Lucas looks back at his building, standing in front of the rising sun, darkened and tall. In this way, it almost looks stately. Like Charm Ridge, or the other high-rises lining the Common. He turns around in his seat. "Thank you for the ride," he says.

            "Whatever."

            "If this is too early, you did not have to offer," Lucas says with a bit of humor in his voice. He tries to smile at Will. "You just stopped working hours ago."

            "I'm not a kid, I'm _fine_. Thanks for your con _cern_."

            Lucas sighs.

            The ride to the airport is ten minutes, if that. Will does not speed and Lucas did not know Will could drive any other way. He patiently waits for pedestrians at crosswalks, and sits idly at yellow lights until they turn red. The music in his car is turned down so low that it could not be discerned, and whenever Lucas feels something tangible on him, he looks to catch the fleeting glance of Will having been staring at him. Lucas fights with himself over what to do, what to say to make Will feel better about this.

            Lucas is hampered by his own demons, but he is not stupid. He knows what Will wants. And for some reason, what comes out of his mouth as they cross the bridge into Logan Airport territory, is: "I almost told Mason about you being a foal."

            " _What_?" Will nearly slams the break, forcing a four car pile-up, but narrowly avoids it. He is back to speeding and Lucas takes in this some victory. "The fuck is your deal? _When_?"

            "When he visited me. Yesterday. I did not do it, though," Lucas says, and raises a hand. "And if I had, it would have only been to help you."

            "Help me," Will groans. "Jesus Christ, you are– you're a piece of work. You can't be real," he says, sighing as they turn into the temporary parking lot. Lucas stares up at the sign they pass under and he is confused until Will takes a spot in the mostly empty lot. Turns the engine off and looks at Lucas. "I'm here already, might as well go in or something."

           

*

 

"Look at this line," Will says, nearly shouts, and some in the vast lobby of the airport turn to look at him. The line to the security check wraps around in a loop-de-loop and Lucas looks at the tail end of it which is growing. He makes his way there and hears Will's Converse sneakers slapping the glossed linoleum behind him. Lucas feels his shoulders sag with each noise: Will is only making this worse on himself. The smack of Will's satchel against his thigh sounds continuously as well, even over the chatter of travelers and the intermittent voice from the intercom.

            When they stand in line, Lucas looks at Will. He is glancing around the wide room like a caged, worried animal. Lucas has never seen such a look on his face and, suddenly, he shrugs and says, "So, you're, like, actually leaving?"

            Lucas cannot help the incredulity that comes to his face. "Yes, Will."

            "Lucas–" He looks up, eyes set hard in his skull. "Come on, this is really nuts. You can't just go back, I–"

            "Will, this is not for discussion."

            Will bites his lower lip.

            "You offered me a ride," Lucas says, "and I appreciate it. You do not need to stay here with me–"

            "I do," he protests. "Well, _someone_ does! You're a mess, you don't know what you're doing! You've obviously been a mess since you got here – you _admitted_ you didn't do a damn thing right. You said you wanted to help me, well, _you’re_ the one who needs help. God. I know you think my job is fucked up but at least I have a place to live. _I’m_ all right. You think you know what’s best for me, for you, for your kid, but you don’t, you don’t at all. If you'd just, I mean, fuck, you can move in with me and just figure it out–"

            "You said you were drunk when you offered that."

            "I was, yeah." Will seems now alert to what Lucas has known for some minutes – that people are watching them. A woman wrapped in cashmere to their front, turned idly over her shoulder, and the man from behind and his family who make no attempt to be secretive in their staring. And who is to know how many others. Will looks, briefly, to their shoes – his and Lucas', standing a foot apart. Then back up to Lucas. "But I. That doesn't mean I didn't mean it. That I don't want it. We, um. We could…"

            _There it is_ , Lucas thinks. The line continually moves and they move with it. After a bit of confused muttering, Will has fallen silent, and his cheeks are pink not simply with the cold of the opening automatic doors in the lobby. Lucas looks at the security check: men and women and children walk in, show their IDs and tickets, and disappear through the gate. As if into another dimension, another world. This plane, he realizes, is purgatory. And nothing happens here. No forward movement, no punishment. As they near the checkpoint, Lucas glances at Will who is gripping his satchel with one hand and staring hard at the floor. His jaw is tense, tight. Grinding. Lucas can see him thinking so hard, trying so hard to figure out what to say and Lucas feels the sensation hit him like a ton of bricks, like cinderblock, that which is ingrained in him down to the marrow: _Comfort the boy._

            He takes Will's shoulder in hand, and squares him to Lucas. Will looks up, eyes wide, and from this angle, he looks much smaller, much slimmer, and so fragile. Lucas shoulders his luggage, and takes a cool hand to smooth back Will's curls. He presses his lips to the warmth of his forehead.

            Will makes a small sound. A gasp, then a sigh. Lucas feels the tension in his shoulder flicker and diminish. Lucas swallows, eyes closed, and moves his mouth an inch over, kissing nearer the left temple. Then the right. With each kiss, he hears a noise from Will; a whimper, or plead. Lucas feels Will's eyelashes flutter and close against his skin. Lucas, finally, retracts himself, and looks at Will's expression, which is something so conflicted that Lucas could not possibly discern one clear emotion. When Will does open his eyes, he looks to see they are feet away from the check, where he must know he cannot follow.

            A look of pure panic comes across that youthful face. He grips Lucas' shirtsleeve. "L-Lucas–" And he cuts himself off. His grip on Lucas’ shirt tightens until Lucas can feel the sweat from Will’s palm permeate the material. Then, slowly, he loosens, simply rubbing the sleeve between his fingers. "You are– you are the," he tries to smile, "the biggest bummer I've ever met."

            Lucas looks at him. Nods.

            "Lucas, if– if things don't work out there–"

            "Mmm."

            "You'll come back here?"

            Lucas is nodding. Will does not seem to believe him, but he has run out of things to say and they have both run out of time. He releases Lucas and shoves a hand into his satchel. Pulls out the moss green sweater that Lucas left long ago at his apartment, and it looks so strange in front of him, in Will's trembling hand, that he does not right off recognize it. Will thrusts it at him, but Lucas takes a step back from it.

            "No," he says. "You can keep it."

            "I don't want it."

            "Okay," Lucas says but still does not take it. He moves with the line and Will steps out of the line, and away, foot by foot until others can pass him. He holds onto the sweater as Lucas turns and gives his passport and ticket to the agents. Lucas steps through the gate.

            A minute later, the line moves and, ahead, Lucas can see other travelers removing their shoes and watches. Just barely. There is little to be seen ahead, such is the nature of the wending way. But there is even less to be seen behind: just between the heads of others waiting near the checkpoint, Lucas can make out Will standing in the lobby. He is watching Lucas, with the sweater, a rumpled green ball, pressed to his chest. The florescence from the ceiling casts a wet gleam in his eyes, and he looks to wipe them with the sleeve. Just before Lucas is completely beyond view, he watches as Will presses the sleeve to his mouth and nose. Will inhales, inhales, and holds the breath.

           

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's that. Really proud of this one - if you follow the blog, you'll have been seeing me waxing over how this is a story about two flawed people inhabiting the same space and time, briefly. (Although I left that last bit out for spoiler reasons.)
> 
> As always, I'll sing the praises of my commenters who are damn good analysts. I would be desolate without you girls!
> 
> I only go into schedule details on the blog, you guys know the drill. If you're cool like me, then roll with me:
> 
> www.metaphorgoneawry.tumblr.com


End file.
